LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

S^ap ¥npijri#:fn 

Shelf ....Q.I. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Angel and the Vision 

OR 



THE NEW CHRISTIAN COMMISSION 




"the freedom of faith." \ 



"And he told us how he had seen the a7igel standing in his 
house."— Acts xi : 13. 

"But Peter rehearsed the matter from the beginnmg, and ex- 
pounded it in order unto them, saying: I was in the city of 
Joppa praying and in a trance I saw a vision.'''' — Acts xi : 4, 5. 



FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY, 
Chicago. New York. Toronto. 

Publishers of Evangelical Literature, 



\ 



^ y 2^ 4 2f 5" 
.Cri 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1895, 
by Fleming H. Revell Company, in the office of the Librarian 
of Congress, at Washington. 



"all my house" 

ALSO TO 

MY "kinsmen and NEAR FRIENDS" 
IN THE GOSPEL 
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 
BY 

THE AUTHOR 



INTRODUCTION. 



There is an enlargement of view that is mere breadth 
without height; it keeps along the level of the earth, 
grows wise over matter and force, pierces to the 
center in its search, weighs and measures all it finds, 
creeps but never soars, deeming the heights above to 
be empty. It is the direction knowledge is now tak- 
ing. The science and a great part of the literature of 
the day and of what is called " culture," and the vast 
crowd that claims for some reason to " know the 
world," the average man in society and business, all 
tend to a mental largeness that has extent without 
height. It is always difficult to maintain the equilib- 
rium of truth. In preceding centuries the mind shot 
upward, but within narrow limits; the gaze of thought 
was heavenward, as in the pictures of the saints. 
There was no look abroad, almost none upon the earth; 
nature was simply to be used as found, not studied for 
further uses. Hence, there was great familiarity with 
the lore of religion, but dense ignorance of the laws 
of matter and of human society; there were mys- 
teries in heaven, but the earth did not even suggest a 
problem. Knowledge was high, but it was not broad. 
Today the reverse is true; thought runs earthward 
and along the level of material things, but hesitates to 
ascend into the region of the spirit. It is interesting 
to note how this tendency pervades classes that ap- 

vii 



viii 



INTRODUCTION 



parently do not influence one another; thus the scien- 
tific class, and the Hghter Hterary class; neither reads 
the works of the other, nor are there any natural 
avenues of sympathy between them, yet in each we 
find the same close study of matter and man, and the 
same ignoring of God and the spiritual nature. Or, 
compare the man of universal culture with the average 
man of the world, who reads the newspaper, and keeps 
his eyes open on the street; the latter knows little of 
the former, never reads his books, nor even dilutions 
of them, yet we find them holding nearly the same 
opinions about God and the Faith, vague, misty and 
indifferent, but both are very observant of what is 
about them. Such a fact seems to indicate that, in- 
stead of one class leading the way, or one set of minds 
dominating the rest, all are swept along by the cur- 
rents that flow out of some unseen force. It is for 
some wise end that the gaze of men is for a time di- 
verted from the heavens and turned to what is about 
them. It had become necessary that man should 
have a somewhat better knowledge of the world, and 
of his relations to it and to society. Hence his atten- 
tion is directed thither by a divine and guiding inspira- 
tion, and no thinking man can be exempt from it. 
The only danger is lest the tendency become excessive 
and we forget to look upward in our eagerness to see 
what is about us. It is the office of Christian thought 
to temper and restrain these monopolizing tendencies, 
and secure a proper balance between them, to hold 
and enforce the twofold fact that, while our eyes are 
made to look into the heavens, our feet are planted in 



INTRODUCTION 



ix 



the soil of this world. Tennyson has no wiser lines 
than these: 

" God fulfills himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

The thing we are apt to fail of to-day is not breadth 
and thoroughness of knowledge of what is about us, 
but of what is above us and within us. 

And in this spiritual realm there must be breadth as 
well as height; conversions not only in character, but 
in opinion. The incident before us is a record not 
only of repenting and turning, but of broadening. For 
conversion does not necessarily enlarge a man, it may 
simply turn him in another direction. It is possible 
to come out of evil into good, and yet remain under 
intellectual conceptions that dwarf and restrain one. 
There is a broad world wisdom that often runs along 
with a worldly life, that may be lost if the better life 
is held under narrow conceptions, so that while the 
change may be a gain morally it is a loss intellectually; 
a process that has had illustration from the first until 
now, in the proselytes whom St. Paul found it so 
hard to teach the distinction between the letter and 
the spirit, and in those of today who fail to distinguish 
between conduct and character, between dogma and 
life, between the form and the substance of the faith. 

Valuable as this book of the Acts is as a record of 
events, and as the nexus between the Dispensations, it 
is more valuable as introducing the life of the Spirit, 
and as showing how the faith of ages develops into 
liberty and the full life and thought of humanity. 
Here we have the full revelation of God evoking the 
full life of man. From " Freedom of Faith " by 

Theo. T. Hunger. 



PREFACE. 



As there are more things in heaven and earth than 
are dreamed of in any man's philosophy, so we beheve 
there are more rehgious spirits in the world than any 
Christian thinks. " All men," says Shakespeare, 
" when at their wits' end, pray." All men have their 
visions and dreams. Man is a religious being. All 
men have 7'eligioiis experiences, which may be pre- 
ludes to a Christian experience. This book is not 
written alone for the " six brethren that accompanied 
Peter," but for the Corneliuses that are in the world, 
" his kinsmen and his near friends," all who in some 
degree share in the religious aspirations of that noble 
Roman captain. 

The book is not a story, although the characters, of 
which it is a study, were genuinely historic; it is based 
on facts. Cornelius and Peter actually lived once 
upon earth, and they were much alike, both in dis- 
position and position. Both had the soldierly spirit. 
One was " captain of the band called the Italian band. " 
The other was captain of the Apostolic band. Hence 
the military figures we have employed. 

This is not a volume of sermons. The contents of 
the chapiers have been given in the form of pulpit ad- 
dresses. They are published in the hope that many 
in the larger audience who read, may say, as 

xi 



xii 



PREFACE 



some in every case who heard, have said, that these 
thoughts have done them good. They are thoughts 
on Peter's vision but they are not visionary thoughts. 
They have been tested by the four hghts of Scripture, 
reason, observation and experience. Thus " knit at 
the four corners," and we trust, "let down from 
heaven," we beheve they will hold together and settle 
down with the weight of conviction on the minds of all 
candid inquirers after the truth. They are published 
under a nom de plume for the sole reason that they 
may have a chance to commend themselves to " every 
man's conscience in the sight of God," untrammeled 
by the voice of any name or authority, or lack of 
authority. 

Several novel features have been introduced into the 
work. One is the poetic paraphrase and postcript, 
another, the insertion of songs with music. We 
know no valid reason why the order and variety of 
a church service should not find place also in a book. 

The eight chapters are based upon the eight coin- 
cidences of the loth Chapter of the Acts of the Apos- 
tles. Together they form a connected series, not, we 
trust, without homiletic value. Few men can write a 
commentary on the whole Bible. This, as far as it is 
expository, is an incomplete commentary on a single 
chapter. 

If the author had not seen a vision he would not 
presume to teach a lesson. He knows not " if an 
angel or spirit have spoken unto him." He believes 
in both. He is not a sceptical Saducee — nor yet a 
superstitious Pharisee. There is one clause in the 



PREFACE 



xiii 



Apostles' creed to which he subscribes with all his 
heart: " I believe in the Holy Ghost." 

The events related in this chapter constituted a 
turning point in the history of the Apostolic church. 
We seem to be in the midst of such a crisis in the 
history of the American church. The need of to-day 
is a larger Christianity. By this expression we mean 
a loftier spiritual vision, a broader intellectual horizon, 
a more intensely practical activity. Peter on the 
housetop seems to us the figure of the coming Chris- 
tian minister. Cornelius on the doorstep, lifted up by 
Peter, seems to us the figure of the coming Christian 
layman — reverent, intelligent, obedient to God, benev- 
olent toward man — the Christian churchman and the 
Christian citizen, working together for the salvation of 
America and the world. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PAGE. 

1. — Accoutrement and Drill; or, The 

Conquests of Prayer. ... 3 

11. — Observations Through the Field 

Glass; or, The World's Conversion. 21 

III. — Visitors at Headquarters; or. Concern- 

ing THE Supernatural. . • . 39 

IV. — Folding Tents; or, Creeds Recon- 

sidered. . . . . . 65 

V. — Idols in The Camp; or, Churchianity 

vs. Christianity. . . . .85 

VI. — Comradeship; or, The Cure for Caste, ioi 

VII. — Loyalty and Devotion; or, A Conse- 
crated Life ,121 

VIII. — The White Uniform; or, A Clean 

Heart. ...... 141 



A PARAPHRASE. 



In the Governor's Castle, in old Csesarea, 

Built strong by the side of the sea, 
There dwelt a centurion — on the edge of Judea — 

A Roman of noble degree. 

Of Cornelian lineage, the blood of Scipio — 

His legion were citizens free — 
The procurator's guardsmen — a chain of Cameo 

From cities of fair Italy. 

Though of swarthy complexion and low in his stature, 

This captain was white in his soul. 
Nor of man-sought promotion; his own royal nature 

As true as the needle to the pole. 

But of God he sought honor and glory and power 

And life and immortality. 
At his prayers he was frequent, his alms they would dower 

The poor with a rich legacy. 

Such a man might be hidden from men and from women, 

But not from the angels of God; 
For the Lord's eyes are seraphs that fly through creation. 

And run through the whole earth abroad. 

To the aid of His chosen, Jerusalem golden, 

God's Son gave His first ministry, 
And His Spirit continued the history olden 

Of calls to God's great Jubilee. 

But at length He commissioned His servant and angel 

To strike a new note on their lyre. 
And to sing a new anthem of blood that was able 

To purge the whole world as with fire. 

XV 



xvi 



A PARAPHRASE 



Not the chorus of Moses, nor hymn of sweet Miriam, 

But song of the Lamb that was slain, 
Of the ten times ten thousand that float in the empyrean, 

Their robes free from every sin stain. 

So now forth to this harvest His messengers speed them 

To garner the first Httle sheaf, 
The first-fruits of the Gentiles, a token and emblem 

Of blessings to come through belief. 

" Cornelius, thy devotion and constant alms-giving 

Come up in the sight of thy God 
As sweet incense that rises and falls in its rising — 

As wreaths o'er the head that is bowed. 

Send now, therefore, to Joppa and call for one Simon 

Whose surname is Peter, ' the rock'; 
He is lodging with Simon, of mean occupation, 

His house, by the side of the dock. 

With a tanner, not soldier. Fail not to go to him, 

His words are salvation to thee; 
Then delay not nor falter. Thou'lt sing the Te Deum, 

Ere long for a new gift from me." 

'Twas the Word of Jehovah; a man in bright clothing 

Stood forth and proclaimed it aloud. 
At the ninth hour of prayer, Cornelius was kneeling. 

Enveloped in no mystic cloud 

Was this angel of mercy, but evident, leaning 

On sword, though without shining wing. 
And the strong man, affrighted, yet still caught the meaning 

Of language of heavenly ring. 

Prompt he called his two servants and also a soldier, 

The trusty, the tried and the true 
Among them that continually, a guard of due honor, 

Stood by him to serve and to do 

Whatsoe'er was the bidding of Master so gentle. 

And faithful and kind and devout. 
They feared his God also, they shared in the trouble 

Of one they knew so much about. 



A PARAPHRASE 



XVll 



These he sends on their journey. The shadows of midnight 

Encompass them still on their way, 
But the thought of their errand makes hearts bright as sun- 
light. 

They travel on into the day. 

They draw nigh to the city about the noon hour, 

When, resting from labor and heat, 
The apostle is sitting or kneeling in prayer — 

The housetop a favorite retreat; 

In the Oriental countries — a place for reclining — 

The shade of some tall, leafy palm 
Making couch quite as pleasant for sleeping or dining 

At noontide as at the day's dawn. 

On it now Jesus' servant finds place for reflection; 

The servants were busy below. 
With their hands full of labor and much preparation. 

Their guest all due honor to show. 

Although weakened by hunger, by prayer and by fasting 

His thoughts with his appetite grow — 
Of a trance the condition, nor sleeping nor waking, 

As those versed in such matters know. 

When, behold! heaven opens and down from its windows, 

Suspended by cords from the skies, 
A great canvas descendeth, a sheet, without pillows. 

On which Peter fastened his eyes. 

As if asking what chamber in God's heavenly mansion. 

Its contents had shown him so soon; 
For of such dazzling whiteness and brightness the vision, 

Translated, he seems in his swoon 

Up to Paradise taken, if not the Third Heaven; 

Not yet was the image complete; 
For a new transformation takes on the apparition, 

A field seems the great open sheet 

Wherein all living creatures beneath the broad heaven 

Seem there in the center to meet, 
And, a shambles erected, this fisherman even 

Is bidden to kill and to eat. 



xviii 



A PARAPHRASE 



"O, not so, Lord," says Peter, " the clean have I eaten 

Alone since my days have begun, 
Yet the clean and the unclean here mingled so common, 

Distasteful 't is to any one." 

The same over-bold Peter crops out in this language. 

And needing rebuke again, too: 
"That which God hath Himself cleansed when past is the old 
age, 

Call thoii not unclean in the new." 

'Twas enough, though repeated three times by the Spirit, 

Enough to confuse, not convince. 
Though it wakened the dreamer who thought to inherit 

All blessings through Israel, the Prince. 

Though the Christ had commanded the things of the kingdom 

Should everywhere flow o'er the earth. 
Yet the men he commissioned to preach to all freedom, 

Were bound by their Jewish creed's girth. 

He reflected upon it, this weird novel vision, 

What could it mean ? Ah ! to be sure, 
Had not Stephen, the martyr, declared the opinion 

That Christ was the world's perfect cure ? 

Should we not then apply it and test its great virtue 

By going where sick sinners are ? 
" Hark! who is it that's calling? My name seems the echo 

Of voices that fall on my ear! " 

'Twas the voice of men shouting: "Where is Simon Peter? 

We're told that he lodges in here; 
If 'tis so, we would see him; we come from a master 

Who neither knows slackness nor fear." 

" Get thee up and go with them, thou Bishop of Sharon, 

They come from your own diocese; 
By myself have I sent them that thou mayest open 

To Gentiles the door of release." 

'Twas the Spirit's voice speaking, and with the men pleading, 

With theirs making true harmony. 
God's wise Providence ruling, and everywhere joining 

The things that so sweetly agree. 



A PARAPHRASE 



xix 



So the Simons received them, these strangers unwelcome, 

Because so defiled by their meat. 
Yet they lodged them and fed them, and next day went with 
them, 

Quite eager their master to greet. 

For they'd heard the glad story rehearsed by these servants, 

Of how a tall angel had stood 
In the house of Cornelius and promised rich presents 

To one who had done so much good. 

For the leader among them, a chosen companion 

In arms, guarded well his lord's fame; 
" He's a man well reported by all the Jews' nation, 

A just man who fears the Lord's name." 

On the morrow, day after, they entered the precincts 

Of Rome's garrisoned capital, 
Where the noble centurion, with love's native instincts, 

His kinsmen and near friends as well 

Had assembled together before God in the Highest 

To hear what His herald would speak, 
Though to him in his blindness this man was the nighest 

Divine of the mortal and weak. 

As he enters the portal he falls down before him 

In homage at once proud and meek; 
'Tis the custom of soldiers to make a low salaam 

When officers' graces they seek. 

Peter lifts up his comrade, for such is his station — 

A man like himself, flesh and blood — 
He perceives that God's favor respecteth no person 

Or nation of men since the flood. 

But on righteousness builded, and truth heard and heeded, 

High character resteth alway. 
Ended thus the first lesson, a second was needed 

For preacher and hearer that day. 

Then followed the sermon, so rich in instruction, 

Compendium of Mark, Luke and John, 
Very simple recital, of no man's invention, 

The story of Christ, not unknown 



XX 



A PARAPHRASE 



To Cornelius and others in that congregation; 

The Word had been published abroad, 
But its riches of mercy and deep implication, 

All this is unfolded by God 

Through the mouth of his servant, the power of the Spirit 

Now carrying it home to their hearts, 
For while Peter yet speaketh the hope of all merit 

At once from his hearers departs. 

And the Holy Ghost falleth, the gift of the Father 

To frail, faulty, perishing man; 
Is't not strange it surpriseth the Jews who came thither, 

That God saveth all that He can. 

*' Can any forbid water that these should be washen, 

Who have the pure Spirit as we ? " 
Truly, no; Peter, never; not one of the brethren 

But heartily now will agree. 

He commanded the baptism, while all are rejoicing 

In God, speaking loud with new tongues; 
Though the miracle ended that night, the next morning 

Finds all of them still at their songs. 



PREFIX TO CHAPTER 1. 



' ' On the morrow, as they were on their journey and drew nigh 
unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray, about the 
sixth hour.'' — Acts x: g. 

God never makes half a Providence any more than man makes 
half a pair of shears. If he fits a preacher to declare His Word 
He fits a hearer to receive that word ; if He moves one soul to 
cry "What must I do?" He has always moved some other ser- 
vant of His to direct him what to do. Let us ponder the story 
of Paul and Ananias, of Peter and Cornelius, of Philip and the 
eunuch if we would observe the mystery of the Spirit's two-fold 
ministry — to preacher and to hearer, to counselor and to inquirer. 
And, noting this, we shall understand the intimate relation- 
ship between the season of renewal in the heart of the individual 
believer and the time of reviving in the church. If two harp 
strings are in perfect tune you can not smite the one without 
causing the other to vibrate, and if one Christian is touched and 
agitated by the Spirit of God think it not strange that all who 
are like-minded in the Church are moved by the same divine im- 
pulse. Not for ourselves, and that we may enjoy the holy luxury 
of communion with God, are we to seek for the times of refreshing. 
If so, doubtless we shall fail of them, for even spiritual bless- 
ings we may ask and receive not if we seek to consume them 
upon ourselves.—DR. A. J. Gordon. 



A V/orker^s Prayer. 



Frances Ridley t[Avi:KGAL. 




_ — — a_ 



Mendelssohn. 



1. Lord, speak to 

2 O lead me, 

3. 0 teach me, 

4. O use me, 



me that I 

Lord, that I 

Lord, that I 

Lord, use e 



may speak 

may lead 

may teach 

veil me. 




In liv - ing ech - oes of Thy tone; 

The wan - d'ring and the wav - 'ring feet; 

The pre - cious things Thou dost im - part; 

Just as Thou wilt, and when and where; 



-M 



4^ — 



mm 



■fs — ^- 



As Thou hast sought, so let 

0 feed me. Lord, that I 

And wing ray words, that they 

Un - til Thy bless - ed face 



me seek 

ma}' feed 

may reach 

I see, 



! _ IN 




Thy err - ing chil - dren 

Thy hun - g'ring ones with 

The hid - den depths of 

Thv rest, Thy joy. Thy 

I ^ 



I 



-r 

lost 
man 
nia 
glo 



mm 



and 
na 
ny a 

ry 



fete 



lone, 
sweet, 
heart, 
share. 

g3;E 



i 



CHAPTER 1. 



ACCOUTREMENT AND DRILL ; OR, THE CONQUESTS OF 
PRAYER. 

Prayer is like the personal Jesus. It is the medi- 
ator between God and man. No man cometh unto the 
Father but by prayer. There is no salvation without it. 

1. — Prayer is the knocking at " the door of the gate " 
which opens into life. For the gate of the kingdom 
is not like the gate of the prison into which Peter was 
cast, which " opened of its own accord." Even that 
gate was opened by prayer. We do not know that 
God ever sends His angel to unbolt the bars and swing 
back the doors that shut in a lost soul but in answer 
to prayer for that soul. Certainly the angel never 
brings deliverance to a single captive who is not him- 
self, as Cornelius was, a man " that prays to God," if 
not always, at least in the accepted hour. 

Nor can we be released from the " inner prison " of 
inbred sin unless like Paul and Silas at Phillippi we 
are found praying to God, albeit songs of praise rather 
than of penitence may now mingle with our petitions. 
If we would get past " the first and the second ward " 
of both the guilt and the love of sin, if the " two 
chains " of bondage to sinful habits and a sinful nature 
are to be broken, if the " two soldiers " of Satan and 
an evil world, sent to guard us, are finally to be put 

3 



4 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



to death, this double, quadruple, yea, sextuple deliv- 
erance can be wrought only through prayer. If we are 
to gird ourselves anew for the Master's work, if we are 
to bind on those sandals which Paul calls " the prep- 
aration of the Gospel of peace," if we are to cast 
about us the garment of holiness and thus go forth we 
must both pray ourselves and not be ashamed to have 
prayer made by the church without ceasing to God for 
us. 

Whatever the motive that leads men to Christ, 
their inquiries after the way of life must be miade on 
bended knee. The young man that came running in 
the v/ay, knelt and asked " Good Master, what good 
thing shall I do to inherit eternal life .'^ " The jailer 
came trembling and fell doivii before Paul and Silas 
and said, " Sirs, what must I do to be saved 1 " Saul 
of Tarsus, prostrate on the Damascus road, would not 
so much as lift his sightless eyeballs to heaven as he 
said *' Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do " and 
Cornehus was observing the ninth hour of prayer in 
his house when he said to the angel, " What is it, 
Lord.?" See what diverse impulses led these men 
who are yet all led to the same place of prayer. 
With the young man, it is the hope of heaven; with 
the jailer it is the fear of hell; with the persecuting 
Saul it is neither, but a desire to be as helpful as he 
had been hitherto hurtful to the cause of Christ; with 
Cornelius, the "just man," it was a sincere desire after 
the knowledge of the truth. Yet all these seekers 
after God sought Him by prayer. " Behold, he 
prayeth " could be said of each of them. 



ACCOUTREMENT AND DRILL 



5 



" Thy prayers, and thine alms are gone up for a 
memorial before God," said the angel — a very striking 
and significant word, memorial. Were these prayers 
and alms then a direct petition to the throne of God, 
such as might be sent to a legislature in behalf of 
some needed reform? Did Cornelius intentionally 
seek to control the will of God or influence the 
Almighty thus in his behalf ? Rather do we think 
these alms and prayers were a seeking to know what 
God wanted than an attempt to get from God what 
Cornelius wanted. They were less like a petition to 
a legislative body sent by the creators and rulers of 
that body, the people, than like so many messengers 
sent to the Queen from Parliament, asking that the 
message from the throne might be received and read. 
Cornelius would know the will of God and, therefore, 
he had set about the doing of that will as far as he 
knew, v/aiting with eager expectation for more light. 
" If any man willeth to do my will," said Christ, " he 
shall know of the doctrine." And this is the conse- 
crated soul's idea of prayer — not a petition even, 
much less a protest, but rather the preamble to a 
series of resolutions that have already been partially 
carried into practice, setting forth the desire of the 
soul to be more fully conformed to the will of God. 
Of course, God can not fail to save a soul that comes 
in such an attitude before Him. 

The first conquest, then, of prayer, is the successful 
assault on the gateway of the kingdom — for the 
" kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent 
take it by force," but it is the lawful violence of 
earnest and persistent prayer. 



6 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



11. — The second conquest we mention is the con- 
quest of truth. Here is another gate to be forced by 
prayer. As all true prayer presupposes a measure of 
faith, so it prepares the way for increased knowledge 
of and obedience to the truth. Prayer, whether it be 
but the dim yearning of the sin-darkened heart " feel- 
ing after God if haply he may find Him," or whether 
it be the Macedonian cry that more clearly sees its 
need, is like the Damascus street that was called 
"straight." A crooked thoroughfare in fact it was, 
but it was the straight road to the house of Judas where 
lodged the sinner Saul. Crooked, doubtless, are the 
notions of the Pagan souls about us, but their heart- 
longings after the salvation of God are straight. And 
these go straight to the heart of God. If we could see 
the hearts of the people of every place we should hear 
God saying as he did to Paul at Corinth, " I have much 
people in this city." There are more hearts that pray 
than this world dreams of. 

Again, prayer prepares the preacher to preach and 
the hearers to hear the Word of God. As the men 
draw near who are coming to Peter with ears opened 
by prayer, so his own mouth is filled as he goes up 
upon the housetop to pray. As the table is set by his 
host below, so the Lord prepares him a table upon the 
housetop above. By prayer is the appetite of the 
eaters whetted, by prayer is the appetizing portion 
made ready. Here is a riddle for our day. It is the 
riddle of Sampson again. " Out of the eater came 
forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness. " 
Only out of the eater, who must be a man of prayer, 



ACCOUTREMENT AND DRILL 



7 



can come forth meat. This is the riddle for the pul- 
pit. If God's Word is to be as sweet as honey in our 
mouths it must be lodged in hearts made strong by 
prayer. This is the riddle for the pew. And if that 
Word is to burn as fire in the standing corn of the 
Philistines there must be two foxes with this firebrand 
between them. The pulpit and the pew must be tied 
together by prayer. 

We are not prepared to " think on these things," 
much less to do them, until " in everything by prayer 
and supplication with thanksgiving" we have made 
known our requests unto God. (Phil, iv: 6-9.) This 
is the Divine order of pursuit in the investigation of 
revealed truth. First, prayer; secondarily, thought; 
thirdly, action. This was the order of procedure by 
Peter on the housetop. He went up to pray. He 
tarried to " think on the vision." But his reflections 
were cut short by the Spirit's imperative, " Rise, Pe- 
ter. " He was not to stand upon the order of his going 
but to go at once and put in practice the principles 
just learned in the school of prayer. 

The reason why we must begin our studies in this 
preparatory school is because the vision can not be seen 
from any other point of view than that afforded by our 
faith-faculty. This is the dome of the soul, the top- 
most story of "the building not made with hands." 
" Eye hath not seen nor ear heard." The senses 
are but windows in the basement of this building. 
" Neither hath it entered into the heart of man to con- 
ceive the things that God hath prepared for them that 
love Him." Judgment, reason, imagination, these 



8 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



are windows in the second story but they are not the 
housetop. " But God hath revealed them to us by 
His Spirit." That Spirit's voice is heard only in the 
" spirit of man," the holy of holies of human nature, 
the housetop of the human soul. But the existence 
of this housetop is scarcely known by the man who 
never prays. The hidden staircase that leads to it, is 
the so often unused ladder of prayer. 

Besides, this vision of the soul is a directer one than 
even the Divinely aided reason can give. " Blessed 
are those who have not seen and yet have believed " — 
to see. The women on the resurrection morn who 
came " and held Him by the feet and worshipped 
Him " needed no other evidence that it \vas the Lord. 
They needed not to eat and drink with Him. There 
are souls that need not to eat the meat of reason laid 
upon the cold beach of the critical judgment or broiled 
upon the coals of a fervid imagination, nor yet 
the honeycomb of a word-revelation, to convince 
them of the glory of their Lord. The}^ need no 
candle to see the Sun. Like the beloved John, they 
recognize Him by the eye of faith in the dawn of His 
personal revelation. 

Only, then, in the treetops of the soul can we hear 
the voice of the Lord, and usually only in " the cool 
of the day." Jacob learned the name of the mystic 
angel that wrestled with him, but it was before the sun 
had risen upon him at Penuel. There is something in 
"the light of common day" that makes the vision, 
like a photographic negative, fade. Spiritual things 
seem unreal in the glare of the world's " broad field of 



ACCOUTREMENT AND DRILL 



9 



battle," unless, like Peter, we spread the tent of 
prayer above us. Then our covering becomes a glory, 
and w^ith eyes thus shaded v^e can see at noon-day as 
at midnight. The unseen and the eternal are not 
easily looked at save through the telescope of prayer, 
and then only amid the darkness of the closet's 
solitude. Hence, retirement with. God is indispensable 
to such research. When the dew of a prayerful spirit 
is off the soul there is no soul-prism that can reflect 
the glories of the unseen God. 

The poet of Methodism has thus expressed this truth 
in his famous hymn on " The Wrestling Jacob:" 

Come, O thou traveler unknown, 

Whom still I hold, but cannot see; 
My company before is gone, 

And I am left alone with thee; 
With thee all night I mean to stay 

And wrestle till the break of day. 

Wilt thou not now to me reveal 

Thy new unutterable name ? 
Tell me, I beseech thee, tell; 

To know it now resolved I am; 
Wrestling I will not let thee go 

Till I thy name, thy nature know. 

'Tis love! 'tis love! Thou diedst for me; 

I hear thy whisper in my heart; 
The morning breaks, the shadows flee; 

Pure, universal love thou art; 
To me, to all, thy bowels move; 

Thy nature and thy name is Love. 

My prayer hath power with God; the grace 

Unspeakable I now receive; 
Through faith I see Thee face to face; 

I see Thee face to face and live! 
In vain I have not wept and strove; 

Thy nature and Thy name is Love. 



lO THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 

But prayer is no less essential to the knowledge of 
the truth than it is to its fulfillment in life. The 
voice that speaks of duty and says " thou " with 
emphasis, must be thrice repeated. It is twice as 
hard to understand as it is to believe the truth, and 
thrice as hard to obey as it is to understand. Only the 
man of prayer can solve this problem. Only the man 
of prayer can have his ears opened to hear and heed 
both the doctrines and the commandments of the Lord. 

III. — But prayer, again, conquers our weakness. 
It may bow the bodily form and close for its purpose 
the mortal eye, but it lifts up the head bowed down by 
care and sorrow and strengthens the feeble knees of 
irresolution. Daniel prayed three times a day w^ith his 
windows open toward Jerusalem. David prayed morn- 
ing, noon and night. Peter also had this habit, as did 
the centurion Cornelius. Nor was it a matter of form 
to the former. It was as his necessary food and rest. 

Why do we so deceive our own hearts as to think 
there can be any other than a vain religion that does 
not keep itself continually before God and the Father 
in prayer ? We might as well hope to live by fasting 
as to live without prayer. And not only is it the diet 
of the soul; it is its daily occupation. To " watch 
unto prayer" is the only w^ay to wear the helmet of 
salvation. If we close the visor of such watchfulness 
how can we see to quench all the flaming darts of the 
Wicked One ? 

Restraining prayer we cease to fight. 
Prayer makes the Christian's armor bright 
And Satan trembles when he sees 
The weakest saint upon his knees. 



ACCOUTREMENT AND DRILL 



One can not be a true soldier of Jesus Christ and 
not perform this sentinel duty. The good soldier of 
Jesus Christ is like that devout soldier of Cornelius 
who " waited upon him continually. " We need not be 
as Anna, always in the temple, yet we can not serve God 
unless it be by prayers " night and day." So Cornelius 
served God. So Peter served Him. So did the 
Divine Christ. On the mountain top, by the sea-side, 
in the temple and in the garden, He poured out His 
soul in " strong crying and tears unto Him that was 
able to save Him from death and was heard in that 
He feared. " 

There are three great means of grace, prayer, the 
reading of the Holy Scriptures and work. They sus- 
tain the same relation to the soul's health and vigor 
that rest, food and exercise do to bodily health and 
strength. If one would know how to get physically 
strong, and how to stay so, he must learn the secret 
of maintaining the proper balance and proportion be- 
tween these three elements of bodily power. He 
must take the due amount and proper kind of food, 
exercise and rest, and these in proportions properly 
adapted to each other and to his own constitution. 
So, likewise, is it with the care of the soul. We can 
no more afford to neglect prayer than we can afford 
to refuse the 

" Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
Chief nourisher in life's feast." 

A Protestant Christianity which emphasizes the two 

Sunday sermons as the essential features of its wor- 



12 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



ship, to the neglect of the midweek service of prayer, 
or the daily call to Christian work, offers a temptation 
to spiritual gormandizing, and it is not surprising that 
the prevalent form of spiritual ailment among us is the 
gout. " For this cause, many are weak and sickly 
among us." Not that we eat too much of the Word 
of God, but we rest too little in the soul-communion 
of prayer, and labor too little in the Lord's harvest 
field. The average Protestant suffers as much, pos- 
sibly, from this kind of spiritual gluttony, as the aver- 
age Roman Catholic from spiritual anaemia or mal- 
nutrition. 

Some one has said: " In prayer we speak to God; 
in the reading of the Word, God speaks to us. There- 
fore, if we must neglect either of these great means of 
grace, we had better omit prayer." The fallacy of 
this argument is quite apparent. There is a false 
premise in the syllogism, leading, of course, to a false 
conclusion. Prayer is not converse with God, in 
which the praying soul monopolizes the heavenly con- 
versation. So far from this, the man of prayer does 
not even lead the conversation. For all true prayer 
takes the Holy Spirit as the leader of its devotions. 
All true prayer is " in the Holy Ghost." The Spirit 
maketh intercession for the saints, according to the 
Vv^ill of God." Where He leads, we may safely fol- 
low. Moreover, prayer is more than converse with 
God; it is soul-communion with Him, often speechless 
with rapture and holy delight; yea, in a sense, even 
thoughtless, if by thought is meant mere ratiocination. 
" Be still and know," is often God's word to the soul 



ACCOUTREMENT AND DRILL 



13 



in prayer, and quite as often does the Spirit speak 
to us when we are in this mood and attitude before 
Him, as do we speak to God. 

" A communion," says Dr. A. J. Gordon, " in which 
something is imparted from God to us as well as some- 
thing asked of God by us, should be constantly sought. 
Is it possible for the Lord through the Holy Spirit to 
make direct and intelligible communications to our 
spirits, instructing us in regard to duty, and clearly 
enlightening us respecting His will ? Certainly, Chris- 
tians who have sought to read God's handwriting 
from the tablet of consciousness, have often been de- 
ceived and led into grievous mistakes. This fact 
should be admitted and marked for our warning and 
admonition, as should also the supplemicntary fact 
that the Holy Scriptures are the great and principal 
manual of instructions as to Christian duty. But there 
are emergencies when we need more minute and 
specific directions than could possibly be contained in 
so general a book. And certainly the Holy Spirit 
does give them to those who rely upon Him. But 
how We should say generally by a providential 
guidance. ^ Besides this we must believe 

that to obedient and humble souls the Master does 
sometimes speak in distinct tones through the Spirit. 
But it is only to ' a mind inwardly retired before the 
Lord' that this privilege is given." 

Especially when we take inquiring souls up upon the 
housetop to commune with them as Samuel communed 
with Saul, is it necessary to conserve and use our spir- 
itual strength to the best advantage through prayer. 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



Quotations from the Word, of promises or warnings, 
of answers to doubts or objections; these are indeed 
the " sword of the Spirit," but a verse from personal 
experience, illustrative of these texts, will give added 
point to the Word, while a word of prayer will so 
bring the struggling soul into close quarters that vic- 
tory for God and that soul will be assured. So that 
when the seeker turns to go from us. God will give 
him, as he did Saul, another heart. (I Samuel x: 9.) 

IV. — But prayer's greatest conquest is the conquest 
of the world for Jesus. There are three Divine forces 
that must cooperate in the production of spiritual re- 
sults. The first is the showers of Divine grace. But 
if we would have the outpouring of the Spirit upon 
our labors we must open the windows of Heaven by 
ihe hand of prayer; we must lift up mountain peaks, 
yea, mountain ranges of supplication wherewith to 
condense the dews of Divine mercy, and empty the 
clouds of blessing upon our heads. The second heav- 
enly force is the sunligJit of Divine truth. But prayer 
is the prism that unfolds these rays to the soul's vision; 
Lhe magic lantern that casts the pictures of revelation 
upon the canvas of spiritual perception. God's truth 
is seen best through the hazy atmosphere of pra3'er. 
The third force is the season of a propitious Provi- 
dence. We believe that God sends us our opportuni- 
ties, that His hand always opens the " great and effect- 
ual doors," but prayer awakens us and quickens us to 
improve these opportunities and to enter these open 
doors. Prayer is the hot-house roof that " rushes the 
season," that " hastens the coming of the Lord." If 



ACCOUTREMENT AND DRILL 



15 



there are these three purely heavenly forces concerned 
in the production of a spiritual harvest, so there are 
three human or earthly ones — the sozver or servant of 
God, the seed of the Word made flesh through the 
voice of a living ministry and the soil of the hearer's 
heart. But neither will these forces accompHsh their 
purpose without prayer. Prayer is the combined Gos- 
pel threshing machine, plow and drill for the use of 
the Lord's husbandmen. Prayer, far more than study 
without prayer, will husk the seed of the living Word 
from the Scriptures; prayer will scatter it with lavish 
hand beyond the borders of the actual congregation; 
prayer alone can break up the fallow ground of the 
hearer's heart. 

Peter went up upon the housetop to pray and that 
prayer became a water-spout to catch the rain of Di- 
vine blessing, a lightning-rod for the electric currents 
of Divine truth, a ladder for the descending angels of 
Divine Providence. Peter tarried upon that house-top 
in prayer, and became, through the influence of that 
prayer, a sky-light for the transmission of the truth of 
the Divine Word, a burning-glass for the focalization 
of that truth upon the hearts of the household of Cor- 
nelius; for " while he yet spake these words the Holy 
Ghost fell " as through a trap-door suddenly opened in 
souls hitherto comparatively unconscious of the reality 
and might of the Divine presence. 

Almost every " forward movement" in the history 
of the church has had its origin in prayer. It was af- 
ter hours spent in prayer in the early morning that 
Jesus began His missionary tour of Galilee. It was 



1 6 THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 

prayer that led Him to preach the Gospel " to other 
cities also." It was after a night spent in prayer that 
He chose His apostles and sent them forth to preach. 
It was after praying the Lord of the harvest to send 
forth more laborers into His harvest, that He called 
the seventy and sent them two by two, as journey- 
men. Gospel apprentices into every city into which He 
Himself was to come. It was out of the ^olean cave 
of prayer that the " rushing mighty wind " of Pente- 
cost came. It was prayer that unlocked the door of 
the church to the Gentiles. It was prayer through 
which the voice of the Holy Ghost was heard saying, 
" separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work where- 
unto I have called them," and when they had " fasted 
and prayed" they sent away the first band of foreign 
missionaries the church ever ordained. It was prayer 
that prepared the heart of the Ethiopian eunuch to re- 
ceive as good soil the seed of Divine truth; for he had 
been up to Jerusalem to worship. Prayer first intro- 
duced the Gospel into the Dark Continent. Prayer, 
not Xerxes, first successfully invaded Europe. It was 
prayer that opened Lydia's heart and shook the foun- 
dations of the Philhpian jailer's soul. It was the 
prayer," mere licht, mere licht " in Luther's heart that 
brought the Reformation. It was prayer that launched 
the Mayflower. It w^as in a prayer meeting on a 
Thursday night that Methodism was born in England. 
It was in another prayer meeting in New York that 
Barbara Heck was stirred up to stir up Phillip Embury 
to stir up the gift that was in him. It was in a prayer 
meeting behind a hay-stack in Williamsburg, Massa- 



ACCOUTREMENT AND DRILL 



17 



chusetts, that the American Board of Foreign Missions, 
the oldest of our American missionary societies, was 
born. All these enterprises of such " pith and mo- 
ment " but for prayer would have " turned awry and 
lost the name of action." " The native hue of holy 
resolution" would have become "sicklied o'er with 
the pale cast of thought," and nothing great would 
ever have been accomplished for the Master. O! that 
God would send upon his people today a baptism of 
prayer! 



PREFIX TO CHAPTER 1 1 . 



While they made ready ^ he fell into a trance; and he beholdeth 
the Heaven open^ and a certain vessel descending, as it were a 
great sheet, let down by four corners upon the earth; wherein were 
all manner of fourfooted beasts and creeping things of the earth 
and fowls of the heave7i. And there caiiie a voice to him, Rise, 
Peter; kill and eat. But Peter said. Not so. Lord; for I have 
never eaten anything that is common and unclean. And a voice 
came unto him again the second time, Vl'hat God hath cleansed, 
make not thou common. And this was done thrice; and straight- 
way the vessel was received up into heaven.'' 

"There was then a distinction between clean and unclean, 
indicated by the calling of Abraham, yet more explicitly by the 
Levitical rites and laws, yet appointed from the beginning for 
we read of it in the time of Noah; a distinction applicable to 
men, to food, to dwellings, to land, to animals. This distinction 
was made by God for special ends, yet at Christ's death the dis- 
tinction had served its purpose. God interposed and threw down 
the middle wall of partition; not rejecting the Jew, yet accept- 
ing the Gentile, not obliterating national distinctions, but making 
these no longer of any importance, and attaching to them no 
spiritual or religious privilege. Without lowering the Jew, he 
lifted up the Gentile; not making the Jew unclean, but the Gen- 
tile clean, so that from that time there should be (so far as ac- 
cess to God was concerned) 'neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor 
free.' In the vision or trance Peter was taught that the Gen- 
tile was now made as clean as the Jew; that God had done it, 
and that even he, though the Apostle of the circumcision, must 
at once accept the verdict." — Bonar. 



Missionary Jubilee Hymn, 

Francis Ridl»y Havergal. 

-\ ^■ 



w. r>. G. 



All ye who love His ho - ly sway 



I I ^ 

Re-joice with Je - sus Christ to-day 

Re-joice with Him, re-joice in-deed, For He shall see His chosen seed! 
Of all His own He loseth none, They shall be gathered one by one ; 
A-rise and work ! a-rise and pray ! That He would haste the dawning day ! 




The tra - vail of His soul is past, 
'But ours the trust, the grand employ 
He gath - er - eth the smallest grain. 
And let the sil-ver trumpet sound, 
- J _ * 



He shall be sat - is - 
To work out this Di - 
His tra -vail shall not 
Wher-ev-er Satan's si 
-ff- A -0- 



fied at last, 
vin - est joy. 
be in vain, 
are found. 



i — I — ^ ^ ^=1 h-'l — i — 



6 The vanqnished foe shall soon be stilled, 6 
The conquering Saviour's joy fulfilled 
Fulfilled in us, fulfilled in them, 
His crown, His royal diadem. 



Soon, soon our waiting 
The Saviour's mighty j 
His harvest-joy is filUn 
He shall be satisfied at 



Jesus Crucified. 

Frederick William Faber. 



eyes shall see 
ubilee ! 
g fast, 
last. 



W. D. G. 



-4- -9- " ' -m- S- -4- 

1. Have we no tears to shed for Him, While soldiers scoff and Jews deride? 

2. Saven times He spoke, seven words of love, And all three hours His silence cried, 

3. Oh, break, oh, break, hard heart of mine ! Thy weak self-love and guilt^v pride 

4. Come, take thy stand beneath the cross. And let the blood from out that side 





Ah! look how patiently He hangs: 
For mer-cy on the souls of men ; 
His Pi-late and His Ju-das were ; 
Fall gent-ly on thee drop by drop ; 



Je-sus, our Love, is cru-ci-fied. 
Je-sus, our Love, is cru-ci-fied. 
Je-sus, our Love, is cru-ci-fied. 
Je-sus, our Love, is cru-ci-fied. 






CHAPTER II. 



observations through the field glass; or, the 
world's conversion. 

On the map of the world there are no longer any 
unknown lands or foreign countries. The progress of 
modern exploration has led to the occupation of the 
world's remotest bounds while the invention of new 
modes of transit and communication has practically 
united the uttermost parts of the earth. Space and 
time are so nearly annihilated as to be scarcely any 
hindrance to human intercourse. As men may now 
travel with the rapidity of the wind and transmit their 
thoughts as swiftly as the lightnings, the time has 
come, foretold in prophecy, when " many should run 
to and fro and knowledge should be increased." 
Peter's vision symbolizes a modern reality. The 
telegraph is the cord that now binds together the four 
corners of the earth, while the newspaper is the sheet 
that sets before us daily a miscellaneous dish of the 
clean and unclean doings of the whole race. 

The result of this drawing together of all men by the 
multiplication of the means of inter-communication 
has been the rapid growth of an international life 
hitherto unknown in history. 

Mankind is beginning to realize its unity. We are 
coming to understand the prophetic statement of Paul 

21 



22 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



that " God hath made of one blood all nations of men 
for to dwell on all the face of the earth." We are 
learning that the whole wide world is our father's 
house. In it are many rooms, yet every one is occupied 
by our brothers. The whole footstool is covered with 
a continuous piece of human carpet upon which every 
knee shall yet bow and every tongue shall yet confess 
that Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. 
So runs the m-odern missionary dream. 

Yet it is more than a dream. For the work of the 
gospel in our own land is a type and pledge of its 
world-wide conquest. The vessel, which in his vision 
Peter saw, might aptly be chosen as the Divine em- 
blem not less of humanity than of the citizenship 
of the country in which we dwell. Originally an 
asylum for the oppressed of every land, for more 
than a century the spacious retreat for the over- 
crowded peoples of Europe, our nation has continued 
to open wide its gates to all comers from all quar- 
ters of the habitable globe. The result is a mixture 
of tribes and kindreds and tongues which we can in- 
deed number, but which taxes the assimilative powers 
of the national stomach to its utmost. How can we 
digest this mass, this conglomerate population ? How 
bring them into the experience of a common salvation ? 
America is the trial missionary field of the world. 
God has not waited for us to go into all the world. 
He has sent the world to our doors. We have but to 
hear His voice saying to us, " Rise, kill and eat." 



observations through the field glass 2 3 

1. — Opportunities. 

The opportunities of missionary work to-day in 
foreign lands grow out of four peculiar conditions: 

Devoutness of Pagan Peoples. — The Pagan na- 
tions, though blinded by superstition, are as yet com- 
paratively free from skepticism. Translations of the 
infidel v/ritings of Voltaire, Paine and Ingersoll are 
sold in India, China and Japan and these tares are be- 
ing sown along with the pure wheat of the gospel 
among the educated classes in these lands. But as 
yet the mass of the heathen retain their faith in their 
false religions and as yet there is no corrupt form of 
Christianity sufficiently established among them to 
give point to the caricatures of these writers. The 
" World's Congress of Religions" did much to open 
the eyes of the more intelligent heathen to the truth 
that Christianity was an individual more than a na- 
tional religion. Hence the influence of the evil ex- 
ample of nominal Christian residents in foreign ports 
we may hope to counteract. As yet the perilous time 
has not come when these nations are ready to aban- 
don their idols and go over in a body either to Chris- 
tianity or universal skepticism — a last state which 
would be worse than the first. Besides, the heathen 
are comparatively docile. There exists not among 
them that form of intellectual conceit which presumes 
either to give a private interpretation, or add to the 
teachings of their sacred books. With all the meta- 
physical subtlety of the Hindoos they do not think 
themselves quite competent, as some American Chris- 



^4 THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 

tians seem to be, to reconstruct their Bible. Nor are 
they, with all their idolatry, practical atheists ? They 
believe in the gods, if not in God, and live according 
to their belief. Immorality is undoubtedly among 
them in its grossest forms, especially as judged by the 
Christian standard, but irreligion is an unknown 
quantity. With the problem of professed impiety the 
missionary does not have to deal. The heathen are 
devout after their fashion. They have not yet learned 
that man is a purely scientific animal. They count 
even the animals themselves sacred and consider that 
if man is not a religious being his evolution has been a 
dismal failure. And because the heathen have in 
their creed a place for prayer and for man as a wor- 
shiping creature there is more hope for them than for 
the secularists of Christian lands who are without 
God and without hope in the world. 

Co7isangiiinity of Pagan Races. — Another great 
opportunity arises from the compactness, the homo- 
geneity of Pagan peoples. By as much as the vast- 
ness of their populations, crowded into geographical 
proximity and united closely by racial relationship, 
renders it difficult to drive in the entering wedge, 
by so much does it make easy the national log- 
splitting at the last. The hitherto Christianized na- 
tions are green trees, comparatively young and with 
parts loosely knit together. We are soft saplings, 
loose-jointed striplings. But such nations as India 
and China are dry trees — " ancient and rock-ribbed as 
the Sun." Yet the dynamite of the Gospel, preached 
with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven, can 



OBSERVATIONS THROUGH THE FIELD GLASS 2$ 

and will open them up — as tropical forests are opened 
up — to Christianity as well as to commerce and civiliza- 
tion. Only the break will not come till " all things 
are ready." But when they are, it will come suddenly 
and " a nation shall be born in a day." "Whereas 
now, it may be exceptional to baptize whole families, 
then whole villages and cities will turn to the Lord 
and give heed to the Philips " from the least unto the 
greatest. " 

This statement may seem to be at variance with 
what has just been said about the advantages of the 
present mode of gathering one by one. The danger 
of a wholesale work is always lack of thoroughness. 
But there will never be again such spectacles of nomi- 
nal baptisms by the thousand, as when our German 
forefathers were driven like sheep into the river — and 
compelled to accept Christianity at the edge of the 
sword. The true method of the Christian propaganda 
is too well understood today. The present Pagan 
people will yet accept Christ in multitudes, but it will 
be " in the valley of decision," and under the influence 
of Pentecostal outpourings of the Holy Spirit. 

Here, then, are two conditions similar to the con- 
dition of Cornelius and his household. The devout- 
ness and simple-mindedness of the heathen joined to 
their antiquity and unity of race render them indeed, 
" devout " men, and those who, whether they fear 
God, or whatever they do — do it, " with all their 
house." 

In two other respects, however, the present day 
conditions are different. The Pagans of today are not 



26 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



rich enough to " give alms," nor are they in any sen- 
sible degree prepared by their own religions for the 
Gospel of Christ. 

Extj^eme Poverty of the Heathen. — The poverty of 
the heathen is phenomenal. The comparative com- 
fort in which the poorest classes among Occidental 
nations live is unknown in the farther East. These 
people are poor, miserably poor. Millions of them go 
to bed hungry every night. Americans, even in hard 
times, know not the meaning of the word poor. Such 
squalid poverty as the great mass of the East Indians 
live in is doubtless a curse of God, but that compara- 
tive universal wealth and comfort which is the product 
of Christianity and which prevails only under a 
Christian civilization, has not yet come among them 
to minister to the pride of man. The heathen have 
no great material civilization of which to boast while 
they forget that God who is " the Father of lights" 
and " from whom cometh every good and perfect 
gift." And because they are poor, and consequently 
humble, the lower caste people of India are to-day by 
thousands and tens of thousands " gladly receiving the 
word," as the poor of this world always have done in 
all ages when the gospel has been simply and lovingly 
preached to them. 

Heathen Fields Virgin Soil. — A fourth and last 
great opportunity we mention comes from the fact 
that the heathen fields are yet virgin soil for the seed 
of Divine truth. The gospel of Jesus Christ has never 
been adequately tried among them. What fruit it 
may yet bring forth we only know in part. What new 



OBSERVATIONS THROUGH THE FIELD GLASS 2/ 

and matchless forms of Christian character and life it 
may develop and thus add to the infinite variety of 
Christian products, who can tell ? It may be, yea, it 
must be, because " offenses must needs come," that 
individuals among them, yea, whole cities may reject 
our Christ, but as yet there are none among them 
" condemned already." There are cities in America 
which have been exalted to heaven in point of privi- 
lege that are even now cast down to hell in point of 
peril. The problem of all timiC is how to save these 
cities. But heathen cities are neither so lost nor yet 
so saved because not so enlightened. The shadows 
are always deepest and darkest where the light is most 
intense. There are doubtless abominations in London 
and Chicago that can not be paralleled in Calcutta or 
Bombay, and so we have a greater chance to fully save 
Calcutta or Bombay than we have to save New York or 
Chicago. In spite of a century of missions the field is 
yet comparatively uncultivated. The skirmish only has 
been fought, the battle is yet to begin. A hundred 
years of world-wide missions means comparatively a 
hundred years of seed sowing. The time of the har- 
vest is not yet. What it shall be, it doth not yet ap- 
pear, but we know that when He shall appear, the 
church gathered out of all nations shall appear with 
him in glory. 

II. — Hindrances. 

But to the voice which says: " Rise, kill and 
eat," we today, like Peter, say, " Not so. Lord." In 
the great debate on the subject of world-wide missions, 



28 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



which took place in the council of Jerusalem some 
years after the time of Peter's vision, the church was 
divided into three parties. 

1. The party of James, which was Judaistic and 
ultra-conservative, although it probably included at 
the time a large majority of the apostles and brethren. 

2. The party of Peter, the conservatives. 

3. The party of Paul and Barnabas, the progres- 
sives. 

The party of James stood for the principle of elec- 
tion. " God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take 
out of them a people for his name." The party of 
Peter stood for the principle of official prerogative, 
" Ye know," says Peter, " how that a good while ago 
God made choice among us that by my mouth the 
Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and be- 
lieve. " But the party of Paul and Barnabas stood for in- 
dependent evangelism, the test of whose authority was 
results. They stood for a universal gospel received 
by those who, hearing that God was no respecter of 
persons, judged themselves, through the merits of 
Christ's blood, worthy of eternal life. 

We have these parties in the church today. There 
is the hyper-Calvinist, the modern Judaist, who con- 
strues the principle of national election to special 
religious privileges or individual election to office in 
the kingdom as a limited personal call to life and sal- 
vation. He can not be expected to be a very enthu- 
siastic advocate of the cause of missions. Neither 
can his half-brother who believes that this gospel of 
the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a 



OBSERVATIONS THROUGH THE FIELD GLASS 29 

witness against the world's sin and unbelief rather 
than for the healing of the nations. Any one who 
looks for the end to come before the gospel has 
brought the kingdom more fully than we see it at pre- 
sent established, it seems to us, can not believe much 
in the dispensation of the Holy Ghost and does much 
harm to the cause of the world's evangelization. 
Then there is the party of Peter who look with dis- 
favor upon any but the regular operations of the church 
missionary societies, any attempts made by Spirit- 
baptized individual leaders to accomplish in the way 
of faith or on the principle of self-support, what is 
being done in another way by the official church 
agencies. And yet in spite of these prejudices we are 
more and more coming to agree that God wills the sal- 
vation of the world. Let Him work by whomsoever He 
will we will still pray the Lord of the harvest to send 
forth more laborers into His harvest. 

Other hindrances, which are mere scruples, may be 
easily removed. To-day, as in Paul's time, the gross 
immorality, the universal idolatry and the personal 
impurity of Pagan people might properly require a 
similar encychcal, bidding the converts from heathen- 
ism " abstain from fornication and from idols and from 
things strangled and from blood." Yet our mission- 
aries report that heathen converts are quite as success- 
ful in the conquest of their besetting sins and in the 
improvement of both manners and morals as the aver- 
age convert in Christian lands. 

There is, indeed, but one serious obstacle to our 
faith in the rapid progress of the gospel. That dif- 



30 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



ficulty is race prejudice. It is deeply rooted. In our 
home missionary work it is the source of much unbe- 
Hef and hardness of heart. In the West it confronts 
us in the saying that " the only good Indian is a dead 
Indian " and " for ways that are dark and tricks that 
are vain the heathen Chinee is peculiar." In the 
South it is " cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants 
shall he be." In the cities it is our foreign-born 
population that can not be saved. In the country it 
is " the poor white trash." Abroad, it is the whole 
noil-Anglo-Saxon world. It is even boldly declared 
that Christianity is adapted only to this latter race or 
mixture of races. Then we laboriously trace our 
genealogy to the lost tribes of Israel, as if this 
descent, if proved, were a sufficient explanation of the 
success of the gospel in the English speaking world. 

But we should not to be thus wise in our own con- 
ceits. This gospel is for every race that will believe 
and if the Anglo-Saxon part of the Christian world 
prove recreant to its high trust God will raise up 
another race to do His missionary work. Race pride 
and prejudice must be removed if Christ's way is to 
be prepared among all nations. 

III. — Obligations. 

And so the Divine voice replies : " What God 
hath cleansed call not thou common." It is said that 
the heathen can be saved without us. If this means 
that they will all be saved, this last error of universal- 
ism, as applied to the Pagan world, is worse than the 
first crude heresy which said that they will all be 



OBSERVATIONS THROUGH THE FIELD GLASS 3 1 

damned. If, in past generations, Christians inclined 
too much to the latter view, the church of to-day in- 
clines too much to the former. But what do we mean 
when we say that they can be saved without the gos- 
pel The old missionary argument was based upon a 
theory of the spiritual condition of the heathen, which 
left them all without hope as long as they were with- 
out a knowledge of God through the written script- 
ures, the historical Christ, or the preached gospel. 
The new argument does not underestimate the saving 
efficacy of these Divine instrumentalities, but it does 
not dwell so exclusively on the picture of the lost con- 
dition of the Pagan world. It says that " in every 
nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness 
is accepted with Him." It declares that God is no re- 
specter of persons and that whosoever anywhere lives 
up to the light he has can not be under Divine con- 
demnation. 

Alongside this principle the modern believer in mis- 
sions lays another, viz. : That such heathen are not 
brought into a justified relation to God by the exer- 
cise of evangelical faith, but by obedience to the truth 
they know. The principle of obedience is the root of 
saving faith " among all nations, " but it has one man- 
ifestation among those who are " without the law" 
and another among those who are " under the law," 
as the Jews were. And still another among those to 
whom the gospel has been preached and who are 
therefore " under the law to Christ." These last are 
commanded to " believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." 
These last are under the law of faith, but the others 



32 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



are for a season under the law of works. " For there 
is no respect of persons with God. For as many as 
have sinned without law shall be punished without 
law, and as many as have sinned with law shall be 
punished by law, for not the hearers of the law are just 
before God but the doers of the law shall be justified. 
For when the Gentiles, which have no law, do by nature 
the things of the law, these, having no law, are a law 
unto themselves, in that they show the work of the law 
written in their hearts, their consciences bearing witness 
and their thoughts one with another accusing or else 
excusing them." Rom. ii: 11-15. Before Peter 
comes to Cornelius this is the universal principle of 
Divine judgment. Nor does the gospel essentially 
alter this principle. The faith demanded in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, so far from making void the law, the 
rather establishes it. It is only another form of obe- 
dience required in order to secure obedience to the 
law of righteousness. This second call of Christ to 
faith is made in order to make effectual the first call 
to repentance and to good works. 

There may be sporadic cases which indicate that 
the Holy Spirit is not limited in his sanctifying opera- 
tions to the sphere of visible human agency but 
they do not invalidate the general principle that He 
ordinarily works in conjunction with the written or 
spoken Word. These cases are the exceptions which 
prove the rule. To argue from this that God is a 
sovereign, who acknowledges no such law as that of 
the necessity of human co-operation in the salvation 
of the world, would be like arguing from the existence 



OBSERVATIONS THROUGH THE FIELD GLASS 33 



of comets and meteors that there was no law regulat- 
ing the revolution of the planets. 

The deliverance of those who in every nation are 
" shut up under a law until faith come " is at best but 
partial. They may be saved from " the bondage to 
fear" and yet, as Paul says concerning the Jews of 
his day who were out of Christ, they differ nothing 
from servants though they were heirs of all. And 
this because they were in slavery to other things, those 
very things to which the whole creation was made 
subject. Romans viii: 20-23. These are "vanity," 
" corruption," " pain." Both Jew and Gentile under 
law have no true soul-liberty. They are empty of the 
love of God. " He that loveth not knoweth not 
God." Without the Holy Spirit given to shed abroad 
that love in their hearts, their repentance, their justi- 
fication is not " unto life. " Eternal life will come only 
as a late gift at the end of their days to those " who 
by patient continuance in well-doing seek for honor 
and glory and immortality ? " Why ? Because they 
seek not these things by faith. Now " faith cometh 
by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." 

Furthermore, send them this Word of God and you 
add to all the probabilities of obedience. Here is a 
principle on which we act in education. " Knowledge 
is power" for good or evil but experience proves that 
where this knowledge embraces moral and religious 
truth it is in the majority of cases a blessing and not a 
curse to its possessor. " Where ignorance is bliss 
't is folly to be wise" but echo is apt to answer 
" where." We also act on this principle in business. 



34 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



"Nothing succeeds like success." Advertising, like 
missionary contributions, seems like a waste of money 
but it is not a waste to the man who thereby finds a 
new market for his goods or establishes a national 
reputation. " He that hath to him shall more be 
given." A little knowledge, a little religion, are each 
dangerous things. " Drink deep or taste not the Pierian 
spring." As "the destruction of the poor is their 
poverty " so the peril of the heathen is not in sending 
to them the new light of Christianity which demands 
so much more of them than their old faiths, but rather 
in leaving them to perish by the weight of their own 
spiritual ignorance. 

Practically, then, the old question returns. How can 
the heathen be saved without a knowledge of the 
gospel " How can they call on Him in whom they 
have not believed and how can they believe in Him 
of whom they have not heard and how can they hear 
without a preacher and how can they preach except 
they be sent ? " The Word of God is the instrument 
of the soul's regeneration and sanctification and that 
Word must be carried to the heathen as Peter carried 
it to Cornelius. The Holy Ghost did not fall till 
Peter came. That was God's order in the first cen- 
tury and it is God's order also in the nineteenth. The 
modern question is not so much how can they be 
saved without us as how can we be saved without 
them, z. e. , unless we either send or go to them. 
God has provided some better thing for his church 
than that we should merely receive a good report 
through the exercise of personal faith. Some of the 



OBSERVATIONS THROUGH THE FIELD GLASS 35 



heathen themselves may do that well without us. 
But God does not intend that either they without us 
or we without them should be made perfect. 

Having considered the world's need in the light of 
its spiritual condition without Christ let us now look 
at the vast number of those thus destitute of the gos- 
pel. " The population of the world," says Dr. A. T. 
Pierson, " is reckoned at about fifteen millions. Of 
these at least one-half are yet in the deep dark death- 
shade, not only unconverted but unevangelized, that 
is, unreached by the gospel message. That the pic- 
ture may not be painted in the discouraging colors of 
the pessimist or with the gloomy undertone of despond- 
ency let us concede that only this half of the race remain 
to be delivered out of the darkness of spiritual death. 
How are we to bring every soul of these 750 millions 
of mankind to the knowledge of a crucified Christ ? " 

The missionary operations of the first century are 
to those of the nineteenth what the caravels of 
Columbus are to the " ocean greyhounds," the Cunard 
steamers of today. The gospel was preached then in 
every nation under the heaven and came unto all the 
world. But the known world of Paul's day was to the 
world of today as Palestine, one small province, was to 
the whole Roman empire. Missions in the apostolic 
age were simply the trial trip of the old ship Zion. It 
was like Peter's visit to Samaria and Csesarea. Ours 
is the true age of missions. And, concerning the great 
commission, it is 

*' Our's not to make reply, 
Our's not to reason why — 
Ours but to do or die," 



36 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



only that the world may be conquered for our 
King. 

Three times the call came to Peter. " What God 
hath cleansed, call not thou common." Three times 
the call has been given in history. Once it was only to 
those who had been bidden to the feast. Those who 
heard the voice of Christ and his apostles were certainly 
highly favored invited guests. But the Master of the 
house, being angry at that ancient world which perse- 
cuted more than it had received His son, issues the 
second command " Go out into the streets and lanes 
of the city and bring in hither the poor, the maimed, 
the halt and the blind." And the servant, the Chris- 
tian church, did as He commanded, for, when the 
cities of Greece and Italy w'ere overrun by those bar- 
barians of the north, poor and consequently envious of 
the prosperity of Rome, maimed, as all semi-savage 
races are, and halt and blind, ignorant of the arts and 
sciences of civilized life, the Christian bishops and 
clergy went forth to meet the invaders and preached 
Christ to them. And we today are the fruits of these 
Gothic missions. But now the third call comes " Go 
out into the by-ways and the hedges " of the East Indian 
villages, the China towns, the Japanese settlements of 
these far off countries and " compel them to come in. 
God grant that the church may hear this last call be- 
fore the Lord of the harvest comes. 



PREFIX TO CHAPTER III. 



''''And while Peter was much perplexed 'in himself what the 
vision which he had seen might mean, behold, the men that were 
sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon's house, stood 
before the gate, and called and asked whether Simon, which was 
surnamed Peter, were lodging there,'"' — Acts x: 17, 18. 

" God is teaching both men, drawing them off into the realm of 
vision, where they can be more effectually molded to the Divine 
uses. Sleep is not vacant of spiritual impression. God giveth 
his beloved, not sleep, but ''in sleep.' Into that mystery of 
physical repose that unbars the doors of the mind and withdraws 
the sentry of the will, the spirit may come as unto its own and 
say what it could not when the man is hedged about with wake- 
ful and watchful powers. Shakespeare puts the deepest moral 
experience of evil men into their dreams; why not also into those 
of the good? 

The fundamental Christian idea is God seeking man, not man 
seeking God; the latter phrase represents a subordinate idea. 
It is not a search after God, but a revelation of God. The 
grand movement and impulse are on the Divine side. We our- 
selves can find nothing; we can only take what comes, the un- 
veiling of Divinity, careful only lest anything revealed escape 
our notice. 

I do not think the best thought is now stumbling over miracle, 
as it was a few years ago. Modern intelligence has grown so 
wide that it embraces both law and miracle in one harmony and 
cares little to find any line of demarkation between them. 
Law fades out into miracle and miracle runs up into law. No 
one now defines one as the violation of another. An assertion 
of "the reign of law" does not disturb us so long as we are 
conscious of the hourly miracles wrought by personality." 

— T. T. MUNGER. 



The Soyereignty of God. 

FEiNCES BiDLEY HavERQAL. 




W. B. G. 



p 



3. 



y ^ C?-e5 - ceTi - do. J 

f God Al-might-y! King of na-tions ! earth Thy foot-stool, heav'n Thy throne! 
\ Life and death are in Thy keep-ing, and Thy will or -dain-eth all, 
(■Reigning, guiding, all-com-mand-ing, rul-ing myr-iad worlds of light; 
\ "Working all things by Thy pow- er, by the coun-sel of Thy will ; 
( In Thy sovereignty re - joic-ing, we. Thy children, bow and praise; 
\ With Thy heart of sovereign mer-cy, and Thine arm of sovereign might, 



S5 



-C — • — # — # — p- — #— 



i 



-V — t^- 



i 



■ Q b N — ^ — \- — — ^ ^ 



Cres 



--A ^^ — 



m 



Rallentando. 



Thine the great-ness, pow'r and glo-ry, Thine the kingdom, Lord, a-lone ! 
Now ex - alt - ing, now a - bas-ing, none can stay Thy hand of might! 
For we know that kind and lov-ing, just and true, are all Thy ways; 



Ritard. 



From the arm-ies of Thy heavens to an un-seen in-sect's fall. 
Thou art God! e-noughto know it, and to hear Thy word "Be still ! 
For our great and strong sal-va - tion, in Thy sovereign grace u - nite. 



Chorus. 



/£/ tempo. ^ \^^^~~ 



God Al-might-y ! King of na-tions ! earth Thy foot-stool,heaT'D Thy throne ! 



-t- 



t — b — — ^- 




]/ 1^ ^ . /t . y 



Thine the greatness, pow'r and glo-ry, Thine the kingdom, Lord, a - lone I 



f- r- 



CHAPTER III. 



VISITORS AT headquarters; or, concerning the 

SUPERNATURAL. 

We live in an age where it is the fashion to discuss 
the subject of rehgion. From the four corners of the 
earth, the representatives of every rehgion of every 
land have met in a " World's Congress of Religions." 
Never before in the history of mankind was such a 
scene witnessed and never before, probably, has soci- 
ety, in the person of its more alert and active minds, 
apparently been more exercised concerning unseen 
and eternal things. It can not be possible that any 
one who is at all observant of passing events can have 
altogether escaped the contagion of the religious dis- 
cussion that is in the air. Either an incoming tide of 
faith or an outgoing tide of scepticism has caught every 
thinking man and carried him either nearer ashore or 
farther out to sea as regards the greatest questions 
which can engage the attention of the human mind. 

It is fortunate for the Christian teacher that this 
should be so. It is a happy circumstance, favorable 
to the successful prosecution of his calling, that the 
very spirit of the times should conspire with a natural 
human interest to lead men, as Cornelius was led, to 
" think on these things." This general interest in re- 
ligion is a good angel which will send men to Peter 

39 



40 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



that they may hear " words of him." These hearers 
may be spiritually ignorant or even infidel, yet the true 
teacher of Christ will rejoice that men have come to 
think, even though they doubt, and to inquire when 
they do not understand. He wdll rejoice in the hope 
that the doubter may at length become a believer and 
the inquirer sometime understand. 

He may more reasonably hope for this result if 
he himself believe, understand and obey the truth which 
has been revealed to him. He must not doubt the 
reality of his own experience, as Peter was at first 
tempted to do. The preacher must also inquire " what 
the vision which he has seen should mean," and he 
must expect that, if not " disobedient to the heavenly 
vision," new demonstrations of the Spirit will be 
granted him as he comes into closer relation with the 
souls whom he would instruct in the way of life. He 
may then be prepared to meet the three-fold inquiry 
of our day concerning the supernatural. 

1 . Are there genuine cases of the supernatural } If so 

2. What conclusion shall we form concerning 
them, what is their philosophy } 

3. " Cui bono } " What is the final cause or pur- 
pose of the supernatural 

As to the first of these questions, as we meditate, we 
fancy we hear three men knocking at our study door. 
They are men of our time. They are called the Material- 
ist, the Positivist, the Agnostic. The first denies the su- 
pernatural, because he denies there is anything but mat- 
ter in the universe, that there is any independent mind 
anywhere. The second says it is no matter whether 



VISITORS AT HEADQUARTERS 



41 



there is or not, he will exercise his mind only on matter. 
There is nothing worthy of study or investigation but 
scientific phenomena. The third has no mind on the 
subject. The Agnostic knows nothing about the super- 
natural and is more or less content, like his brother 
the Positivist, to remain in ignorance. These men, 
it is evident, are not very earnest inquirers, yet we 
must treat their real or professed indifference with 
respect. 

That God should reveal Himself at all is a first fact 
supernatural in itself. The external proofs of this 
revelation are indeed worthy of the most careful and 
critical examination, but they are not likely to carry 
deep conviction to the mind that has not sufficiently 
considered the fact of the Divine existence in its pri- 
mary relations to the human mind. If God is abso- 
lute in the sense of being unrelated to us, then it is 
obvious that He can not communicate His will. He 
can not reveal Himself to the finite, and we are shut 
up within ourselves and shut out forever from all com- 
munion with the Infinite. 

There are some to-day who embrace this dark creed, 
although the three men who, in the last century, 
stood as its sponsors are now a long time dead and only 
their ghosts haunt the minds of the modern thinker. 
They were once known as the Rationalist, the Deist 
and the Pantheist. " God has left us to do our own 
thinking," said the Rationalist; " God has left us to 
take care of ourselves," said the Deist; " God has not 
left us," said the Pantheist. " He is nearer to us than 
breathing, closer than hands or feet," because He is 



42 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



we and we are He and all are one. God is every- 
body and everything, and at last we shall all fall back 
into the great abyss of nothingness from which we 
came. 

According to this conception God is like that idol 
Baal whom the prophet Elijah ironically described as 
one who was either " musing" (this is the rationalistic 
conceit) " or he is gone aside, or he is in a journey" 
(this is the deistic), " or peradventure he sleepeth and 
must be awaked " (this is the pantheistic). 

As for those, however, who can not believe that the 
eternal God is a silent, non-communicative Brahm, it 
is not unreasonable to believe that He has spoken to 
man. But once admit the voice and all other wonders 
cease to be such. It is as easy for the everlasting God 
to rend the rocks, as he did at Horeb, as to come out 
of His eternal solitude and speak to man. It is as easy 
for Him to break the silence of the everlasting hills 
through the voice of a tempest, as He also did at Sinai, 
as to whisper in the still, small voice of love to a human 
heart. 

In fact, revelation, defined as the communication of 
God with man, is impossible unless the chasm which 
isolates spirits is bridged over by some frame-work of 
signs and symbols which shall furnish the media of 
thought-transference. Whether these be vocal sounds, 
or visible shapes or a more subtle language be em- 
ployed, it is impossible to reach the understanding of 
flesh-bound creatures without some play upon a mate- 
rial organ with which the soul shall be in interaction. 



VISITORS AT HEADQUARTERS 



43 



" The soul is the harper," the ancients said and not 
the harp or the music of the harp, yet the music of 
thought requires an eye or ear which are proper instru- 
ments of this music. How a pure spirit, such as God 
is, can touch the brain of man, whether through a 
visible or verbal revelation or through the inspiration 
of the Holy Ghost, is a mystery and a miracle quite as 
great, though no greater, than the mystery of the 
relation of soul and body, mind and brain. 

That God should speak to man is no more wonder- 
ful in itself than that man should speak to man. In 
the process of oral communication the hearer but 
reads off the vocal signs made by the speaker, as the 
telegraph operator reads his alphabet or his cypher 
and translates them into mental conceptions which 
bear no possible physical resemblance to these symbols 
which suggest them. All language is symbolism, all 
speech is spiritual and hence supernatural. 

Granting then, the possibility of revelation as super- 
natural, why should it not be embodied in a book ? 
Why should it not be a written as well as spoken or 
seen revelation If the Bible be a record in the main of 
supernatural events and truths, if there be abundant evi- 
dence to support this main proposition, then the particu- 
lar stories of miraculous doings and sayings which it 
contains are not to be caviled at, forsooth, because to 
this or that mind they seem inherently incredible. 
The Bible stories are but corollaries to the main pro- 
position, and, however capable of independent proof, 
are yet carried by the weight of the main argument. 

It is possible to explain some of these things as due 



44 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



to natural causes. " Peter's vision, " says Robertson, 
" evidently in its form and in its direction was the 
result of previous natural circumstances. The death 
of Stephen must have had its effect on the Apostle's 
mind. The truth for which he died, the transient 
character of Judaism, must have suggested strange 
new thoughts to be pondered on and doubted on; add 
to this, the Apostle was in a state of hunger. In 
ecstasy, or trance or vision things meet for food pre- 
sented themselves to his mental eye. Evidently the 
form in which this took place was shaped by his phy- 
sical cravings, the direction depended partly upon his 
previous thoughts concerning the opening question of 
the church. But the eternal truth, the spiritual verity 
conveyed by the vision, was clearly of a higher source. 
Here are the limits of the natural and the supernatural 
closely bordering on each other." 

But if the law of association of ideas will explain 
Peter's vision we are at a loss to see how it can ex- 
plain Cornelius's. Both men saw visions. But the 
latter was not half asleep or anhungered when he saw 
the angel. He saw him " evidently." Nor could his 
previous thoughts have anticipated such a message. 
When he saw him he was "affrighted." Cornelius' 
vision, even more than Peter's, is a case of the super- 
natural. 

Nor can the evolutionist dispense with the super- 
natural. " There are secrets gradually unfolded in the 
worlds of mind and matter the slow disclosure of which 
is appomted to be the aim and reward of human 
science." But it is otherwise with the secret things 



VISITORS AT HEADQUARTERS 



45 



of God. They have been slowly disclosed, it is true, 
but they have been revealed, not discovered. It may 
be well to emphasize this fact in these days when the 
scientific doctrine of evolution is brought forward to 
explain the origin of man's Bible as well as man him- 
self. The Bible, it is said, is the accretion of ages. 
As man is the last result of a process of develope- 
ment which had been going on for measureless spaces 
of time before him, so the Bible is the final product 
of man's growing intelligence concerning Divine 
things. It came of his education which it took 
thousands of years to complete. Now, if by education 
be meant education Divinely directed and inspired 
this seems to be a true account of the matter. We 
may make all the admissions which a true theory of 
evolution, as applied to the Scriptures, may demand 
and yet hold to their Divine inspiration as firmly as we 
hold to the doctrine of creation. The world was not 
made in a day, but it was created, not evolved out of 
pre-existent matter. So the Bible was revealed, not 
evolved out of man's inner consciousness. " Of a 
truth I perceive" said Peter — after, not before God 
taught him. It is true there is a progress of doctrine 
and experience traceable in Scripture just as there is 
a progress in species of life from mollusk and radiate 
to the human race. But how does this affect our 
faith that God conducted this progress and is the 
author of all the successive orders and genera of 
animal life. He presided during all the geological 
epochs. So He was present in all the dispensations, 



46 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



Indeed there is a close analogy between creation 
and revelation as to their supernatural character. As 
revelation must bridge over the chasm that isolates 
spirits, so creation must cross the gulf that separates 
thought from being, the ideal from the world of 
reality. Creation is a much higher effort than com- 
munion of thought and yet an effort of a similar kind. 
If original thinkers be called creators, how much 
rather He who casts all the worlds of his conception 
into the molds of objective existence. Nor is this a 
manufacture, even in the sense of the evolutionist. 
Not even the germ of thought is given to the great 
Thinker, not even the material for his wondrous 
works. " He spake and it was done. He commanded 
and it stood fast." This is the Scriptural doctrine of 
creation. And this is the supernatural. 

Now, if our friends, the Materialist, the Positivist, 
the Agnostic, would, like Isaac and the two servants 
of Abraham, but go to the top of this " Mount of the 
Lord," called Holy Scripture, they would, like Abra- 
ham himself, hear a voice calling to them out of the 
midst of the bush, and that voice would be recognized 
as the voice of the supernatural. Indeed, they would 
recognize it as the same voice that called to Moses out 
of the burning bush; for all Nature is alive and aflame 
with the supernatural, and all the ground on which we 
stand is holy. 

II. — But no sooner are these callers dismissed than 
another group of inquirers knock at our door. They 
come to ask the old question, " how can these things 
be In justice to these gentlemen be it said, they 



VISITORS AT HEADQUARTERS 



47 



have no learned degrees, they bear no high-sounding 
names. They are every-day people whom one meets 
on the street. We call them the Scoffer, the Super- 
stitious Believer and the Sceptic. As they have no 
titles, neither do they deserve them for they have 
not yet graduated. " Everything, nothing, something, 
enough,"" says Joseph Cook, " these are the Freshman, 
Sophomore, Junior and Senior years in the curriculum 
of religious culture." The Scoffer is a Freshman, the 
Superstitious Believer, a Sophomore, the Sceptic, a 
Junior, but none of them have reached the Senior 
year. They are representatives of those Jews on the 
day of Pentecost, some of whom mocked, saying, 
" These men are filled with new wine," others were 
amazed, still others were perplexed, saying one to 
another, " what meaneth this " 

What shall we say to these men } That man him- 
self is a supernatural being. The question of the pos- 
sibility of miracles we regard as settled in advance by 
the fact of the question being asked; for, without a cer- 
tain independent power over the operations of his own 
mind, as well as over living matter in the form of a 
physical organism, neither Mr. Hume, nor any other 
sceptic could have given thought or voice to the ques- 
tion itself. This denial is unreasonable, because reason 
itself, while bound by the chain of the flesh and con- 
ditioned as to its exercise by the physical laws, must 
yet have a certain liberty in its prison. There can be 
no true thought-life without freedom. A flow of 
images is not thought. It may be reverie, but reverie 
is not reason. It may be fancy, but fancy is not imag- 



48 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



ination. These latter are voluntary, because selective 
and creative acts. In the exercise of thought proper 
the chaos of mental impressions is reduced to order 
by the mind's own power of organization. The mind 
is not controlled by any law of the association of 
ideas," but determines its own states. It has power 
over itself, over its own day-dreams. Possessed of 
this power it is free; it can construct an argument or 
write a poem, or produce any other equally original 
work. But to say that the mind is free, is to say that it 
is supernatural, i. e., not under the mechanical law of 
cause and effect. 

Again, with all his high gifts, man, bereft as he is of 
instinct, is the most helpless of creatures, and made 
almost utterly dependent upon his own resources for 
the supply of even his lowest wants. It is manifest, 
then, that if he had no power of first cause as well as 
the power to avail himself of those second causes whicli 
surround him in nature he must perish from the earth. 

But of course this idea of the supernatural is so at 
variance with the common notion that, upon first 
presentation, it may seem as if we were evading the 
real issue, and harping upon the trite and common- 
place. But not so. The real point of the whole 
problem hinges upon the mystery of the relation of 
mind and matter, of which we have the most con- 
spicuous though common illustration in the relation of 
the human mind and body. Grant that man himself 
is a miracle and can do supernatural things, can 
change the very face of the world, and who will have 
the hardihood to deny that God can do likewise. 



VISITORS AT HEADQUARTERS 



49 



If these three men were truly wise they would see, 
like the men who came from the East seeking the 
infant Saviour, the star of the supernatural, not only in 
the sky above their heads, " traveling in the greatness 
of its strength," to which all the other stars of heaven 
would make obeisance, as Joseph saw them doing in his 
dream, but they would also see this star before their 
own faces, and, more than all, they would see it 
coming and " standing over the place where the 
young child lay." 

Hov/ever, we believe there would be far fewer 
skeptics and scoffers in the world but for the baneful 
influence of three other men who now approach our 
study door. We refer to three gentlemen whose 
advocacy of the supernatural has done the cause much 
evil, viz.,' the Dogmatist, the Literalist and the 
Pessimist. It is only by a strain of the imagination 
that vv^e can conceive of these men knocking at any- 
body's door for light. Scarcely, then, would they 
condescend to visit us. They belong to that class of 
men who seldom learn anything new. Nevertheless, 
if not for their sakes, yet for the sake of those who 
may be warned off their ground we may say: The 
supernatural is a solemn, awe-inspiring fact, for God 
is in it. Therefore, we should hesitate about framing a 
philosophy of God, or what Carlyle calls a " Theorem 
of the Universe. " This is more foolish than Peter's pro- 
posal on the Mount of Transfiguration to build three 
tabernacles. Men who build theological systems 
should be left in the vale below. Imagine them 
standing on that holy mountain. When the Dogmatist 



50 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



joins in the conversation with Moses and Ehas about 
that awful " decease which He should accomplish at 
Jerusalem," he must needs bring forth his " Theory of 
the Atonement." And when the Literaiist hears the 
voice out of the cloud saying: " This is my beloved 
Son, hear ye Him," he at once leaps to the con- 
clusion that the Old Testament, as represented by 
Moses and Elias is henceforth to be heard no more. 
And yet they spake of Christ. The Literaiist of the 
old school was for believing every jot and tittle of the 
law, ceremonial as well as moral, equally inspired, but 
the new school Literaiist goes with the destructive 
critics and lays aside the whole — because, forsooth, 
there are verbal inaccuracies in the Pentateuch and 
Psalms — Then the Pessimist steps forvrard and says: 
" It is all like the cloud and glory, gone almost as 
soon as come. The Bible is all true, but no man can 
live up to its teachings." I am glad, however, that 
the Word says: " They saw no man save Jesus only, 
witJi thcvisehcs.'' If Peter and James and John could 
walk as He walked why not we, even though we are 
not always encompassed by a cloud of glor}'. 

We should rather trust Faith and Love and Hope in 
their interpretations of the supernatural than our 
friends just mentioned. These are the three who ran 
a race for the sepulchre on the morning of the 
resurrection. Hope, in the person of Peter, is no 
doubting, despairing Thomas. Faith, in the person 
of John, pauses on the edge of the tomb and will not 
intrude as far as Hope, will not " rush in where angels 
fear to tread." Faith can never be a dogmatist, for it 



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51 



knows not what secret things are yet to be revealed. 
Neither can Love be a Hteralist. " The letter killeth, 
but the spirit giveth life. " Mary Magdalene, weeping 
at the door of the sepulchre, mistakes Jesus for the 
gardener, but her heart is right, and to all such, Jesus, 
the true supernatural, will sooner or later surely be 
revealed. 

III. — We had thought we were done with inter- 
viewers. But, as we think, a third distinct trio of vis- 
itors arrive. They come to inquire into the why of the 
supernatural. They style themselves the Artist, the 
Scientist, the Philanthropist — worshippers, as they de- 
clare of the eternal beauty, truth and goodness that 
is in the world. We very much fear that these words 
are abstractions with them rather than concrete reali- 
ties, least of all that they recognize them as incarnate 
in Him who was the " Chief among ten thousand and 
the One altogether lovely." Yet they profess to be 
true worshippers of God, and particularly pride them- 
selves on being above all fear, since they have discov- 
ered the "reign of law" and free from all vagaries 
of the imagination since the realistic in art has come 
into vogue and cherubs' and angels' faces are out of 
place in our modern paintings. They tell us that the 
supernatural is an interruption of that perfect order 
they see reigning everywhere. It seems to them a 
discord in " the music of the spheres," a broken link 
in the chain of cause and effect, an explosion in the 
ranks of the procession of orderly natural phenomena. 

It seems strange to us that whenever the super- 
natural is allowed to have control of the forces and 



52 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



instruments of nature it should be supposed that it 
will in some way work disorder if not mischief and 
that the only way to preserve the creation from fall- 
ing into wreck and ruin is to take it out of the hands 
of the Creator. Such would seem to be the assump- 
tion underl3'ing the scientist's objection to the super- 
natural. He would dismiss the living God as a reck- 
less intruder into his own workshop. And similar is 
the assumption of the philanthropist who would hope 
to succeed in making the world better without the aid 
of a supernatural Gospel and of the artist with whom 
ideals are the only inspiration. 

Besides, it has never been sufficiently recognized 
that both in the ordinary and extraordinary operations 
of iniquity on this earth that the same supernaturalism 
is witnessed. The human will depraved can perform 
feats of mischief and prodigies of crime that challenge 
the wonder and may well excite the alarm of all 
thoughtful men. Indeed, the supernatural is more 
manifest in this realm than in the opposing kingdom 
of righteousness, for the latter means law and order, 
but sin is essential lawlessness and the wildest disorder 
of nature. Hence its mighty deeds constitute a wider 
departure from the customary, where custom has be- 
come established in forms of law and moral practice, 
than the works of charity and faith, where these have 
become as common as they are unostentatious. 

Now we say the true supernatural is a remedial force 
in the world in the interest of the " beauty of holi- 
ness " and the highest law and order. Not at first, 
indeed, does it bring order but chaos, as in Creation. 



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53 



" The earth was without form and void and darkness 
was upon the face of the deep." But the Spirit of 
God, a supernatural force, brooded upon the face of 
the waters and evoked order out of chaos. Similarly, 
in Providence. When the angel of death visits our 
homes we fear as we enter into the cloud. Yet, if at 
first there is confusion of heart and tongue, " after- 
wards " there are the peaceable fruits of righteousness 
and the cloud of affliction is transfigured into a 
cloud of glory. So again, in the kingdom of Grace. 
At first the creature is " made subject to vanity, not 
willingly, but by reason of Him who has subjected the 
same in hope. " At first the revelation of spiritual death, 
bondage, but " afterward " the " spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death." 
Here in human sin is indeed a " reign of law" but it 
is like the rule of Satan, spiritual anarchy. To redeem 
us from the curse of this law, the supernatural Christ 
comes, ''the King in his beauty," to put down all 
such illegitimate and perilous authority and rule. The 
existence of bands called "regulars" and "militia" 
like that " band called the Italian band " points to the 
strong hand of a higher law occasionally introduced to 
counteract the lower law of mob violence. But the 
supernatural is but the higher law of Christ introduced 
into the soul to quell the lower law of sin and death. 
The Catling gun and the Gospel are in this respect, at 
least, alike. The philanthropist and patriot have need 
ot both. 

Lest you may think it is a theologian only who is 
talking about this anarchy of the soul, listen to the 
gifted Byron. 



54 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



"Our life is a false nature — 'tis not in 
The harmony of things — this hard decree, 
This ineradicable taint of sin — 
This boundless Upas — this all blasting tree, 
Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be 
The skies which rain their plagues on man like dew; 
Disease, death, bondage, all the woes we see 
And e'en the woes we see not which throb thro' 
The unmedicable soul, with heartaches ever new." 

Similar is the testimony of Shakespeare as to the 
helplessness of man without the supernatural. 

"Laboring art can never ransom nature 
From her inaidable estate; I say we must not 
So stain our judgment or corrupt our hope. 
To prostitute our past-cure malady 
To empirics, or to dissever so 
Our great self and our credit, to esteem 
A senseless help when help past sense we deem." 

Indeed, so enslaved has the race become to the 
power of sin that the claim of sinlessness on the 
part of any one born of woman is as inherently in- 
credible as miracles appear to be in the eyes of this 
scientific generation. Yet this same generation is 
quick to accord to Jesus all that he claims in this 
respect, obviously not discerning the consequences of 
such an admission. For if the Master be without sin, 
his conception, birth, life, death, in a word his whole 
character and career must have been supernatural. 
Moreover, any approximation to the Savior's character 
and life in its essential moral aspects is conceded to be 
impossible to flesh and blood unassisted by supernatural 
grace. But if Christ and his Church have been under 
this supernatural guidance and assistance he who would 
seek the benefits of the church while denying the super- 



VISITORS AT HEADQUARTERS $5 



natural power of godliness is most inconsistent as well 
as ungrateful. The naturalist, like the formalist, is 
either without any valid claim to true sanctity or he has 
misplaced his claim and filed it away in the wrong 
drawer. It belongs in the pigeon-hole of the super- 
natural. 

Now, if our friends, the Artist, the Scientist, the Phi- 
lanthropist, prefer to worship at this shrine of nature 
where darkness, death and destruction are to be the 
final outcome of this boasted beauty and law and 
order, let them do so, but let them understand that 
the forces of the supernatural, Kke the three young men, 
Aner, Eshcol and Mamre, who were Abraham's com- 
panions in arms in the war in which he took part for 
the rescue of his nephew Lot, are engaged in a great 
work of moral deliverance, a work that is not against 
but in behalf of moral law and order. Let them not 
do as the Priest and Levite who " passed by on the 
other side." Let them join hands with that " power 
that makes for righteousness" in the world. Let 
them recognize the personality of that power. 
Men are "going down to Jericho" daily under the 
power of the gravitation of sin and are " fallen among 
thieves" in the shape of a world which " is no friend 
to grace to help us on to God," they are being stripped 
of their virtue, wounded in spirit and are left half 
dead as far as self-help can go. Will these men, the 
Artist and Scientist, make it their only business to be- 
hold and not be up and doing for humanity's help ? 

We know these men are much aided and abetted 
in their indifference by three other men, viz., the Re- 



56 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



cluse, the Ritualist and the merely moral Reformer. 
But the first is a false prophet, for his voice is not 
heard in the Wilderness as was John the Baptist's. 
The second is like the priest who must not fail to 
stand in his appointed course at Jerusalem, however 
many men by the wayside need " mercy rather than 
sacrifice " and the third is a king without a sceptre or 
a rod of power. Let them all, like the three men who 
entered Abraham's tent when he entertained angels 
unawares, show a hand to help as well as a shining 
wing and the Lots will all be rescued even though the 
Sodoms must be destroyed. 

IV. — We have yet to meet and answer if we can, the 
last group of inquirers. They also are men of our 
day, but they are dressed in ancient garb. They are 
also from the East. That they are wise men, how- 
ever, we can not believe, for the star of wisdom, as of 
empire, in modern times Westward has wended its 
way. This star is "the star of Bethlehem." Chris- 
tianity and not "the light of Asia" is our guide. 
Doubtless, in entertaining this last trio of visitors we 
may entertain some " angels unawares " as Abraham 
did of old. There may be men and women among 
the Spiritualists, the Christian Scientists and the The- 
osophists, who are as devout and as humane as any 
person in an orthodox communion, but if so, their 
hearts are better than their creed. Is the super- 
natural continued today in the form of spirit return } 
Do our deceased friends revisit the earth and minister 
to us, is the question raised by modern spiritualism. 
Until this question is answered by the " Society of 



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57 



Psychical Research," working according to the scien- 
tific method, we may meanwhile appeal " to the law 
and the testimony. If they speak not according to this, 
there is no light in them." Some things in this chap- 
ter of the Book of the Acts, to go no farther, seem to 
point to the conclusion of the spiritualist. 

1. The angel whom Cornelius saw had the ap- 
pearance of a man. 

2. He addressed him famiharly, " Cornelius," and 
waited for a reply, quite after the fashion of an old 
acquaintance. 

J. He was seen " in a vision." It was a species 
of clairvoyance. 

^. He knew what was going on in the country 
round about. " Send for Peter, he lodgeth v/ith one 
Simon, a tanner." 

But here the evidence ends. Here are some cir- 
cumstances which point to an opposite conclusion. 

I . Though in the form of man, he may not have 
been one of " the spirits of just men made perfect." 

The distinction the Scriptures make between 
"angels" and "spirits" (Acts xxiii: 8; Heb. xii: 
22, 23) does not consist in a difference of form. 
Angels can not be a higher order of created intelli- 
gences than man who was made in the image of God. 
The human form in a sense is Divine. The difference 
is one of rank in the same order and of holiness. 
There are angels that never sinned. There is no man 
that has kept his first estate. Angels can not preach 
the gospel because they can not " testify." They can 
not tell any experience of sin and redemption. " He 



58 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



commanded us," said Peter, " to preach unto the 
people and to testify.'' 

2. This angel does not teach the things of God, as 
most professed " spirits " do, but says, " Send, there- 
fore, to Joppa, and call for one Simon." He makes 
no revelations of Heaven. 

3. He testified through the mouth of Peter, that 
" Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." Mark the words 
" is come. " 

Christ lived in the pre-existent state. The modern 
spirits call him a son of God with a little " s." 

4. He makes no further engagements, does not 
through familiarity breed contempt, gives no name 
the personal identity of which he can not prove. 

5. He came to a man of prayerful spirit and habit, 
a pious, God-fearing, well-reported, upright man. He 
came also while he was praying, not singing " Sweet 
by and by " in a promiscuous company of people, good, 
bad and indifferent. 

6. He was praying in his house alone. He was 
his own medium. 

7. Pie was seen "evidently," in broad day-light, 
at three o'clock in the afternoon, not in a darkened 
room at night. 

8. He was " an holy angel," not a " demon." 

9. He was ministering to one of the heirs of sal- 
vation, not making infidels and atheists. 

10. He did not come at Cornelius' beck and nod, 
but at the will of Him that sent him. 

11. We are compassed about by such. They 
are looking at us, but ivc are to look unto Jesus. 
Heb. xii: i, 3. 



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59 



12. Cornelius did not in any sense worship the 
angel. He said, " What is it, sir ? " Barnes' transla- 
tion. 

Yet there is a Biblical spiritualism. 

And is there care in heaven ? And is there love 

In heavenly spirits to these creatures base, 
That may compassion of their evils move ? 

There is — else much more wretched were the case 
Of men than beasts; but O, the exceeding grace 

Of Highest God ! that loves His creatures so, 
And all his works with mercy doth embrace, 

That blessed angels he sends to and fro. 
To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe ! 

How oft do they their silver bowers leave, 

To come to succour us that succour want ! 
How oft do they with golden pinions cleave 

The flitting skyes like flying pursuivant. 
Against foule fiendes to ayd us militant ! 

They for us fight, they watch, and dewly ward, 
And their bright squadrons round about us plant; 

And all for love, and nothing for reward; 
O, why should heavenly God to men have such regard. 

— Spenser. 

With such a spiritualism as this " we'll taste 
e'en here the hallowed bliss of an eternal home." 

Concerning Christian Science. — " Greater works 
than these shall ye do" said Jesus to his Apostles. 
What were these " greater works " ? Surely not phys- 
ical marvels. Paul, the greatest of the Apostles who 
"labored more abundantly than they all" wrought 
fewer of these than Peter. Indeed, in his ordinary 
intercourse with the churches, while he was doing 
his best work, he seems not to have thought of 
even healing the sick. He left Trophimus at Miletus 
sick and did not cure Timothy by miraculous means. 



6o 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



" For whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; 
whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether 
there be knowledge it shall be done away. But now 
abideth faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest 
of these is love." 

Coiicerjiing Theosophy. — " An evil and adulterous 
generation seeketh after a sign." Transmigration of 
souls was not taught Peter by the vision of the sheet. 
It is not the animal creation that " groans and travails 
together in pain, " but the human race thus typified. 
Animals do not suffer as much as men. But transmi- 
gration of souls is better than the modern Pagan dogma 
of reincarnation in human form. Besides, if pain is 
our savior, we can not see the need of the cleansing 
blood of Christ nor indeed can we see what we are thus 
saved from at all. " Except ye see signs and wonders, 
ye will not believe." " He is not here, he is risen," 
said the angels who stood with Christ at the door of the 
sepulchre. These latter, like the stars of prophecy and 
of miracle, lights that once shone in a dark place, in 
company with that sinking moon of the old dispensa- 
tion, that bright and shining light, John the Baptist, 
are not so needed, now that the darkness is past and the 
true light now shineth. Salvation from sin in this life 
is the supreme miracle. The son of man is the great 
sign. The Holy Spirit is the " light which lighteneth 
every man that cometh into the world." "In the 
mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be 
established." 

We can not conclude these reflections without 
calling special attention to the fact that the desire to 



VISITORS AT HEADQUARTERS 6 1 



evade the supernatural is born of the secret desire to 
flee from a personal God. No other God than a per- 
sonal one can be either known or loved. Such only 
possesses any authority, as distinct from physical 
force. Only a personal God can reveal himself and, 
in revealing himself, show a face of pity to the sinner 
or of wrath and indignation against sin. Hence the 
universal desire of the unbelieving world of thought to 
decry and deride the supernatural. 



PREFIX TO CHAPTER IV. 



'■''And while Peter thought on the vision the spirit said unto 
him: Behold^ three men seek th^e. But arise and get thee down 
and go with them, nothing doubting, for I have sent them.'' — Acts 
x: 19, 20. 

" Our verse shows Peter standing between the vision and its 
application. On the one side of him was the mysterious sheet 
full of a multitude of beasts, on the other side were three men 
who needed just the principle which the sheet full of beasts 
involved. It was a critical moment. The question was whether 
the vision could pass through Peter to the three men and to Cor- 
nelius. When on the morrow he ' went away with them ' the 
question was decided and the idea and its appropriate duty 
joined hands. Man standing between his vision and his tasks, 
that is the subject of our verse. That is the place where certain 
men are often called upon peculiarly to stand, and in some de- 
gree it is the place where all men are standing always. F^or 
every man has visions, glimpses, clearer or duller, now bright 
and beautiful, now clouded and obscure, of what is absolutely 
and abstractly true; and every man has also pressing on him the 
warm, clear lives of fellow men. There is the world of truths 
on one side and there is the world of man upon the other. Be- 
tween the two stands man, and these two worlds if man is what 
he ought to be meet through his nature." — Phillips Brooks. 



The Ascended Christ. 



Frances Ridley Havkkgal. 



W. D. G. 




1. Gold - en harps are sounding, An - gel voic - es rinir, 

2. He who came to save us, He who bled and died, 

3. PrajMng for His chil - dren In that bless-ed place, 
« _ _ _ - - - -(S'- 



Pearl - y 
Now is 
Call - ing 



:fzi=:g=tz=t=:t: 



1 1 — I 



X-^ L L_ 



:t=: 



^3 




gates are o - pened, 0-pened for the King, Christ, the King of 
crowned with glo - ry At His Father's side ; Nev - er more to 
them to glo - rj, Send-ing them His grace ; His bright home pre- 

• -9- -0- 




— ^- 

glo 
suf 
par 

—0- 



1 — -t: \ Pf \ — 

-al — F-#-T— ^ ^— — -I 



ry, 

fer ; 

—9- 



Je - sus, King of love, 
Nev - er more to die ; 
Lit - tie ones, for you ; 



:-t: 



Is gone up in tri-umph 
Je - sus, King of glo - ry, 
Je - sus ev - er liv - eth, 
-# — — » » 



±zz± 



Chorus. 



0- ' " -f^- 

To His home a-bove. 
Is gone up on high. 
Ev - er lov - eth too. 



—^-^-0—^^-0- 

All His work is end - ed, 



J oy - ful- 



^_._»._i»,i_p— 1=; 



jzn — w w — [^-^ J 




1^ 



-fv rr — —I f- ^^ ^; iV 



ly we sing, Je - sus hath as-cend-ed! Glo-ry to our King. 



CHAPTER IV. 



FOLDING TENTS ; OR, CREEDS RECONSIDERED. 

On the Mount of Transfiguration Peter proposed to 
build three tabernacles or tents — one for Moses, one 
for Elijah and one for Christ. Apparently unselfish 
in this proposal — for he thought not of building for 
himself or his fellow-disciples — he was really quite 
selfish. It was love of ease and religious enjoyment 
which prompted him to make his thoughtless speech. 
On the housetop Peter is similarly selfish, only it is the 
gratification of a more purely intellectual desire which 
causes him to delay in responding to the calls of his 
visitors. He was reluctant to admit his callers partly 
because he did not enjoy the interruption. It broke 
his train of thought. It compelled him to leave an 
unfinished task, viz., the study of what the vision 
meant. Add to these his mental hunger and his 
finally acquired habit of thinking twice before he spoke 
or acted, and we see reasons enough, apart from his 
Jewish prejudices, why he should have hesitated to go 
down and meet the men at the door. 

It seems to us that these four desires — the love of 
reflection, the passion for system building, added to a 
real hunger for Divine knowledge, and that conserva- 
tive habit of thought which is more marked in re- 

65 



66 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



ligious life and history than any where else — may par- 
tially account for the undue attachment manifested by 
the church in the past for creeds and confessions of 
faith — the theological element of Christianity. 

Yet it is obvious that these intellectual desires, even 
when directed toward Divine truth, should be subor- 
dinated to the more practical impulses which point to- 
ward duty and lead the way. These four cords that 
bind human thought should always be fastened to the 
stakes of practical ends, if in our thinking we are to 
touch not only heaven but earth and human life at 
more than a single point. The speculative impulse is 
a centrifugal force; it tends constantly to fly off at a 
tangent into the realm of abstract theory and to be- 
come unreal. To correct this tendency there is needed 
the centripetal force of devotion to life's practical 
tasks. Hence our creeds, if ever so true, need at 
times, like army tents, to be taken down, temporarily 
at least, and folded up and stored awa}^ in the army 
wagon preparatory to more active service in the field. 

A creed is simply the product of the exercise of 
human thought on Divine truth. The truth, of course, 
never changes. It is a constant factor. But man 
does change and his changes are subject to the law of 
mental development and to all the influences that 
affect human thought and life. And for this reason a 
creed must be an individual as well as a voluntary 
affair. It can neither be imposed on the individual 
mind or be composed by an assembly of minds. Nei- 
ther the decrees of an infallible pope nor the decisions 
of any church council can make a living creed. Each 



FOLDING TENTS 



67 



man's real creed must necessarily be not only some- 
thing he has thought out for himself, but also by him- 
self. As his creed at any one time will neither repre- 
sent his own past nor future thought — so it can not rep- 
resent his brethren's thought. Time and personality 
are factors of such division here as to defy all the 
attempts of law and custom to bring them into unity. 
It must be, in the very nature of the case, that 
these laws of development and individuality apply to 
the formation of any thing worthy of the name of a 
personal creed. 

For these two reasons then, because the creed must, 
in the nature of things, be a growth, and because it is 
subordinate always to character and conduct, we plead 
for such a reconsideration of creeds as shall at least 
consign them to their proper place in a truly Christian 
scheme of life and morals, if it do not essentially 
change them. It seems to me that such a call is the 
voice of the Spirit to the church to-day. 

I. — And the first word of the Spirit to the church 
is the first word to Peter on the housetop. " Arise." 
Stand upon thy feet. Take a view of things from a 
higher altitude. This will not only extend the hori- 
zon of your vision, but at the same time simplify it. 
This is the advantage of the bird's eye view. It gives 
us a representation of the whole, and yet in miniature. 
It is both brief and comprehensive. It seems to us 
that this word should be spoken to the creed revisers 
of today. Let them survey the field as widely as 
possible, but in bringing in their report, let them be 
short. Our creeds need abridgement as well as re- 
vision. 



68 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



Peter formulated a creed when he took the words of 
the Spirit and the wonder of the vision, recast them 
both in the mold of his own thought and then said: 
" Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of 
persons." That was his whole creed summed up. 
Amplified, it embraced two short articles — first, the 
fear of God; and, second, the work of righteousness. 
" In every nation he that feareth God and worketh 
righteousness is accepted with Him." Peter's creed 
included only what was essential. And this, not so 
much in the way of belief in a doctrine as of practice 
in a life. For, added to this, there was one church 
rule " Ye know," said he, " that it is unlawful for a 
man that is a Jew to keep company with or come unto 
one of another nation, but God hath taught me that 
I should call no man common or unclean." And this 
is all the rule the churches would need to-day to gov- 
ern their members in their relation to the world if 
their one great and constantly pursued object in 
"keeping company with or coming to" those who 
were out of Christ was to go with them, as Peter 
went with the messengers of CorneHus, to save them. 

It seems to the writer that the creed of Christ was 
similarly short and simple. Think of a church 
having. as many as thirty-nine " Articles of Religion," 
or even as many as twenty-five, the number Mr. Wes- 
ley retained for the use of his followers from the Arti- 
cles of the Church of England. Christ imposed only 
two. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy 
strength." This is the first and great article of faith. 



FOLDING TENTS 



69 



And the second is like unto it: " Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." Both are comprehended in one 
saying, " Love is the fulfilling of the law." Jesus also 
gave us but one rule, " Whatsoever ye would that 
men should do unto you, do ye also unto them. For 
this is the law and the prophets/' Two articles of 
faith and one rule. How simple, how beautiful, how 
Divine. 

Rev. B. Fay Mills is authority for the following: 
" The church needs the establishment of ethical and 
spiritual rather than theological standards. We have 
hedged in the table of the Lord. It is not our table. 
It belongs to the Lord. In the first church manual, 
accepted as authentic, and formulated by the church 
of the second century, there is not one doctrinal con- 
dition specified. Not one. You may read it for your- 
selves. There were moral and spiritual conditions. 
There was to be love to God and willing acceptance 
of His service. There was to be love to one another 
and there was to be purity. But there was no doc- 
trine. It is not so much doctrine as doing His will." 

II. — The second word of the Spirit to Peter which is 
God's word to the creed-makers of all generations is — 
" Get thee down " — You must stoop, Peter, to conquer. 
You must clothe your thoughts in such speech that 
every man may not only hear in the tongue in which 
he is born but in that part of his native tongue that he 
knows. The dialect of by-gone centuries is no better 
than a dead language. One might as well speak in 
a foreign tongue as to read the phraseology of many 
of the church creeds of today which were written three 



70 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



or four centuries ago. Words change their meaning 
in the lapse of ages. " The words of the Athanasian 
creed " says an eminent writer, " were hving words a 
few centuries ago. They have changed their meaning 
since then, and are, to ninety-nine out of every one 
hundred, only dead words. Yet men tenaciously hold 
to the expressions of which they do not understand 
the meaning, and which have a very different meaning 
now from what they once had — person, procession, 
substance — and they are almost worse with them than 
without them; for they conceal their ignorance and 
place a barrier against the earnestness of inquiry. We 
repeat the creed by rote but the profound truths of 
being which the creed contains, how many of us under- 
stand ? " Dr. Talmage well says, " In order to reach 
the multitudes of outsiders we must drop all technical- 
ities out of our religion. When w^e talk to people 
about the hypostatic union and French encyclopedian- 
ism, we are as impolitic and as little understood as if 
a physician should talk to an ordinary person about 
the pericardium and intercostal muscle and scorbutic 
S3^mptoms. Here are hundreds of thousands of sinning, 
struggling and dying people who need to realize just one 
thing — that Jesus Christ came to save them and will save 
them now. But we go into a profound and elaborate defi- 
nition of what justification is, and after all the work 
there are not, outside of the learned professions, 5,000 
people in the United States who can tell what justifica- 
tion is. I will read you the definition: ' Justification is 
purely a forensic act, the act of a judge sitting in a 
forum, in which the supreme ruler and judge, who ig 



FOLDING TENTS 



accountable to none, and who alone knows the man- 
ner in which the ends of his universal government can 
best be attained, reckons that v/hich was done by the 
substitute, and not on account of anything done by 
them, but purely upon account of this gracious method 
of reckoning, grants them the full remission of their 
sins. ' Now what is justification ? I will tell you what 
justification is. When a sinner believes, God lets 
him off." 

The truths of the Bible were doubtless intended to 
be born again in human thought, but the creeds of the 
reformation era, which we have inherited, bear the 
marks of the unnatural labor that produced them. 
Their authors had been intellectual slaves. Accus- 
tomed, as the reformers had been, to the chains of 
scholastic formulas and the rigid dialectics of the time, 
they could not altogether cast off the shackles of false 
habits of thought; and, as they had in part received 
the truth in its scholastic setting they must needs forge 
similar chains for their pupils. They were addicted to 
the vicious philosophical and theological practices of 
their time. They were not set free in a day. 

III. — The third word of the Spirit to Peter was, 
" Go with them." And this word also is for us. Our 
creeds must be more practical. Around the Divine 
doctrines of the Bible there have grown up in the 
course of ages a body of human dogma. This is the- 
ology. In so far as it is true it is an outgrowth and 
not an overgrowth of Scripture. Its necessity arises 
from the unsystematic way in which the teachings of 
Scripture are presented, thrown out, as the various 



72 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



species of animal and vegetable life are distributed 
over the earth, without much regard to order or system. 
Theology classifies these teachings as the naturalist 
arranges specimens in the cabinet or museum. But 
there is something more important in our religious life 
and thought than classification. I may not be a bot- 
anist, yet I may love flowers. I may classify a mush- 
room with a may-apple because both are umbrella- 
shaped, yet this error is not so perilous as ignorance 
of the difference between a mushroom and a toad- 
stool. I may not be a zoologist and yet love animals. 
I may classify the whale with a porpoise. But this 
error is trivial compared with ignorance of the dif- 
ference between the porpoise and the shark. How 
not to eat poisonous food, how not to fall into the 
jaws of Satan, this is practical theology and the creeds 
should teach us more of this. 

Dr. Josiah Strong says in The Neiv Era : " Doc- 
trine is immensely important, but not all important. 
The root does not exist for itself; it is a means to the 
tree and the fruit as an end. A Christian truth in the 
heart brings forth Christian acts in the life as natur- 
ally as the root pushes itself up into the air and 
sun. Cut the stock, fell the tree, and the root dies at 
length. A faith without works is soon dead. If our 
doctrines do not flower and fruit in Christian living, 
they die. Many a man's creed is a field full of 
stumps. There was life there once, but because the 
natural expression of that life was prevented, it per- 
ished. We have not over-estimated the importance 
of believing the truth, but we have under-estimated 



FOLDING TENTS 



73 



the importance of living the truth." Our creeds must 
take in the second great commandment of the law. 
We must learn to regard man as well as to fear God. 

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase) 

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace 

And sav/ within the moonhght in his room, 

Making it rich and hke a hly in bloom, 

An angel writing in a book of gold; 

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold. 

And to the presence in the room he said, 
"What writest thou ?" — The vision raised its head, 

And, with a look made of all sweet accord, 

Answered, " The names of those who love the Lord." 
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," 

Replied the angel — Abou spoke more low. 

But cheerly still and said, " I pray thee, then, 

Write me as one that loves his fellowmen." 

The angel wrote and vanished. The next night 

It came again with a great wakening light. 

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed — 

And lo, Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. 

We have always admired this poem, yet, lest it give 
occasion to those who think they love their fellow-men 
to divorce what God has joined together and forget 
Him — we use poetic license to amend as follows: 

" And is mine one? " said Abou. "Nay, not yet," 
Replied the angel — "Though mourn not nor fret. 
Be cheerly still; for God hath heard thee, when. 
To His love's joined the love of fellowmen." 

This spoils the story and the poetry, doubtless, but 
it brings it more into harmony with the scriptural story 
of Cornelius' vision and the truth which God would 
teach by that story. 



74 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



IV. — The fourth word of the Spirit to the creed- 
maker is, " Doubting nothing." One reason that 
doubts arose in Peter's mind was that his mind alone 
was occupied. His heart was not engaged. Yet he 
could have better trusted the untutored instinct of his 
heart than what Nebuchadnezzar called " the thoughts 
upon his bed and the visions of his head." The vision 
God gave him was a blessed one, but had he continued 
to think upon it without feeling, the truth itself would 
have lost its hold upon him, and his creed would have 
become narrow and hard. This has been another 
trouble with the creeds of Christendom. The heart 
has usually been left out in their making. The heart 
is like the soldier's bride, usually left at home when 
theological discussion or creed revision has been the 
order of the day. The intellect alone is an unsafe 
leader. It pursues its train of thought without regard 
to the welfare of the human freight it is carrying. It 
is a cavalryman dashing along, regardless of the souls 
it slaughters in its ride. It forges the links of its logi- 
cal chain, careless as to whether that chain binds the 
martyr or the murderer. If salvation be by creed 
rather than by Christ, then the martyr to another 
creed, however pure his life, is as much under Divine 
condemnation as the murderer. Men become hard- 
ened in heart by the exercise of reason alone, but 
they are not changed from fishermen or soldiers into 
butchers, by true Christianity. Surely the Spirit of 
Christ does not thus change the human spirit. No; 
the change is due solely to the dropping down out of 
sight of this damper, the heart; no wonder the manna 



FOLDING TENTS 



75 



of God's Word has then become baked in the oven of 
thought until it has become as hard as a stone. Yet 
people's hearts are often better than their creeds. 
Many a man has been like the tribe of Asher, of whom 
it was said, " He shall dip his foot in oil," though 
" his shoes shall be iron and brass." A tender heart 
encased in an iron creed, this is no uncommon phe- 
nomenon. 

Intellectual belief, is but one element of faith. 
There are two others. The three elements are, the 
assent of the mind to the truth, the consent of the 
heart to the Divine overtures of love, the presen- 
tation of all the active powers of soul and body 
to the service of the Lord Jesus. To admit the 
truth is but to take one step toward the cross. It 
must be followed by others more important, viz. : 
We must co7nmit the salvation of our souls to Him 
whose rightful charge it is, while we sudmit our- 
selves under the mighty hand of God. It was thus 
Cornelius was saved. His head was washed with the 
water of the Divine Word, of which he already knew 
something, before Peter came. His heart was enlisted 
or he never would have fallen at the latter's feet in 
worship. His hands and feet were ready to follow at 
the Lord's command. " Now are we all here present 
before God to hear," and, for a soldier like Cornelius 
to hear was to obey. So the Phillipian jailor was 
saved. He " called for a light," and obtained one. 
Paul " preached the Word unto him," before it was 
said, " he believed, rejoicing with all his house." " He 
came and sprang in, trembling.'' He was alarmed, 



76 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



not because the prisoners were escaped — he had been 
assured that they were all safe; not on account of 
the earthquake now past, but in view of the judgments 
of God. " And he fell down before Paul and Silas, 
and said, * Sirs, what must I do to be saved ? ' " He 
would be a most obedient servant to these " servants 
of the Most High God," if only he could be saved. 
Thus also was Lydia, in many respects a contrast to 
the jailor, savqd. " Whose heart the Lord opened — 
that she attended unto the things which were spoken 
by Paul. And she besought us, saying, " If ye have 
judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my 
house." Faith to Lydia meant three things — trust, 
belief and fidelity. 

V. — The last word of the Spirit to Peter was — " For 
I have sent them. " The Spirit speaking was the Spirit 
of Christ. 

A final argument in behalf of the folding up of our 
creeds is that salvation is not by belief in a creed but 
by faith in Christ. Peter preached Christ, not creed, 
in the house of Cornelius. The word " God " appears 
six times in the brief synopsis we have of his sermon. 
Each time it is God connected with Christ whom 
Peter says is " Lord of all." God, he tells Cornelius, 
"sent" Christ to preach, "anointed" Him for this 
service, was " with Him " as a witness to his author- 
ity and power, " raised Him up " from the dead, 
" chose " His apostles as witnesses and finally " or- 
dained " Him to be the Judge of quick and dead. It 
is Christ as a preacher " who came not to destroy the 
law and the prophets but to fulfill, " Christ as a worker. 



FOLDING TENTS 



77 



a servant who came " not to be ministered unto but 
to minister," Christ as a physician who came " not to 
call the righteous but sinners to repentance. " It is 
the Christ of the first three gospels, and not of the 
fourth, and yet this Christ is sufficient to save. If 
Peter had been suffered by the Spirit to proceed 
further with his discourse he might have added more, 
as he does in his epistles, on the Divinity of Christ 
and on all that His salvation means, but the Spirit 
restrained him from preaching more about Christ than 
was barely essential to a saving knowledge of Him. 
He barely alludes to His future judgeship. He dwells 
particularly upon Him as a present Saviour. 

And after all, this is what men need to hear today. 
Not so much more about Christ than they are ready 
to receive but as much as they " are able to bear." 
But the principal thing is " to sanctify in your hearts 
Christ as Lord." (See Peter iii: 15, Rev. Vers.) 
Some one has said " Peter didn't preach round and 
about Christ, he preached Christ." Now, if men 
are saved by faith in Christ and not by belief in a 
creed then why not make the conditions of admission 
to church membership as simple as Christ did and 
Peter and all the Apostles did For in the council at 
Jerusalem, held some years after this event, to settle 
the question of the Gentiles' relation to the church, 
there was but one doctrinal condition specified. " We 
believe," says Peter, " that we shall be saved through 
the grace of the Lord Jesus even as they." And 
there was no dissenting voice. " All the multitude 
kept silence. " 



78 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



And as Peter does not tell all he knows about the 
Divinity of Christ, neither does he say much of the 
Atonement save that " through his name every one 
that believeth on Him shall receive remission of sins." 
There is here no philosophy of the person of Christ, 
no theology of the atonement, and yet here was truth 
enough to save a whole household and all its con- 
nections. 

And " the doctrines of grace," as they are called, 
preached by Peter are also few and simple. As the 
objective, or Divine side of Christianity presented was 
simple — so was the subjective or human. Cornelius 
had no need of repentance, else repentance would have 
been preached. Peter simply added these two — faith, 
issuing in forgiveness. Repentance, faith, forgive- 
ness, these three. It is true that in answer to the 
prayer of Cornelius God gave him three other great 
blessings — the new birth, the witness of the Spirit, 
and a pure heart. " And when they of the circum- 
cision heard these things, they held their peace and 
glorified God, saying, then to the Gentiles also hath 
God granted repentance unto life." " And God which 
knoweth the heart," said Peter, " bear them witness, 
giving them the Holy Ghost, purifying their hearts by 
faith." There were further instructions in experimen- 
tal religion — given by the Holy Spirit himself — things 
that cannot be taught in any sermon so as to be under- 
stood by the unsaved hearer. It may be well to re- 
quire them as conditions of church membership, but 
they can not be taught through any creed save as that 
creed is taught by Christ Himself received into the 
heart by faith. 



FOLDING TENTS 



79 



For these reasons we think the creeds of the churches 
should be simpUfied, and made more intelHgible and 
practical. Yet let us not be understood as a thought- 
less despiser of these creeds. 

If creed-making, liable as it is to great abuse, were 
yet not a legitimate function of the church it would not 
have followed such a natural order of development in 
history. " This, then," says Dr. Strong, " is the nat- 
ural order in the development of human thought and 
progress to have been expected in the Christian Era; 
and history shows this to have been the actual order. 
First, theology proper, or the doctrine of God, then, 
anthropology, or the doctrine of man, then soteriology 
or the doctrine of salvation, which treats of the rela- 
tions of God and man; and lastly, sociology or the 
doctrine of society, the relation of man to his fellov/s. 

" The discussion of each of these doctrines or each 
cluster of doctrines occupied several generations, and 
some continued through several centuries before they 
were authoritatively formulated by the church. Be- 
cause these doctrines are logically connected, their dis- 
cussions naturally overlapped, but they were each of 
supreme interest in their respective periods. 

" The third period closed during the great reforma- 
tion of the sixteenth century with the formulation, in 
the Protestant symbols, of the doctrine of salvation by 
faith, and then began the sociological age, which will 
continue until its problems are solved by bringing men 
into right relations with each other." 

Now, this precise order of development was antici- 
pated and symbolized in the order of the truth as it is 



8o 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



brought to the mind of Peter and CorneKus and their 
associates. First, there is the lesson taught to Cor- 
neKus that Peter, God's messenger, was also a man 
and not a God come down in the form of man; sec- 
ond, the lesson Peter says God has taught him, viz., 
not to " call any man common or unclean;" third, that 
other truth Peter perceived that " in every nation he 
that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted 
with Him," and fourth, the lesson taught the aston- 
ished Jewish brethren, that they must take these Gen- 
tiles into their fellowship. 

All this is church history, or rather the history of 
church doctrine. It was natural that in the first three 
centuries the subjects of the person of Christ and the 
Trinity should be the great themes of theological dis- 
cussion, that in a later age, the Augustinian, the sub- 
jects of depravity and natural ability should occupy 
the minds of Christian thinkers, and that in the Ref- 
ormation era we should have the atonement and jus- 
tification by faith and that to-day we should have these 
practical questions, the weightier matters of the law 
for consideration, viz: justice, mercy and the love of 
man. 

Again, we repeat, let no one account of us as pos- 
sessed of any prejudice against the creed of any church. 
It is the misunderstanding of the nature and function 
of a creed that calls forth these expressions. Creeds 
are not doors to the kingdom of God, but only door- 
knobs. The door itself may be forced by the violence 
of persistent, earnest prayer, even when the key of 
knowledge has been taken away. It is the abuse 



FOLDING TENTS 



8i 



rather than the proper use of creeds that we deplore. 
And our last word is against the self-deception of 
those who fancy that they have no creed. It is pos- 
sible to be dogmatic in our assertions about dogmas. 
Heterodoxy as well as orthodoxy often means my 
doxy. A creed that declares against all creeds is itself 
a creed. As ever}^ man is either a practical idolator 
or a worshiper of the true God, so every man has a 
measurably true or false creed. There are no atheists 
in the world, neither are there any absolute infidels. 
There is no man without his God. There is no man 
without his creed. 



PREFIX TO CHAPTER V. 



And when it came to pass that Peter entered, Cornelius met 
him, and fell dowft at his feet, and worshipped him. But Peter 
raised hijn up saying: Stand up; 1 7ny self also am a man. — Acts x: 
25, 26. 

" Some trace of his pagan education Luke notes here. Yet it 
is not clear nor probable that the centurion held Peter for a god 
or a demigod, nor even an angel, as Grotius conceives. Lim- 
borch well replied that it is not likely that Cornelius believed 
that an angel told him to send for another angel, or that an 
angel by the name of Simon Peter was lodging with a tanner. 
Limborch rightly explains it that Cornelius paid a more pros- 
trate reverence to Peter as an ambassador of God or a saint or 
sacred personage than true Christianity allows to be paid to any 
mere man. Hence Peter's words. It is remarkably significant 
that Peter, the supposed first so-called pope, should be the man 
to utter this marked caution against over-reverence of saints."— 
Whedon. 



Come Unto Me, 



Unknown. 



W. D. G. 




1. Come un - to me when shad- ows dark - ly gath 

2. Large are the man - sions in thy Father's dwell 

3. There, like an E - den, bios- som - ing in glad ■ 



er, 



^ • 



When the sad heart is 
Glad are the homes that 
Bloom the fair flow'rs that 



wea - ry and dis - tressed, 
sor-rows nev • er dim ; 
earth too rude - ly pressed : 



« 9 — , f- #- 



# 1 



i 



-p-^—%r-9 ^ 

Seek - ing for com - fort 

Sweet are the harps in 

Come un - to me, all 



I y y H- 



from your heav'nly Fa - ther, 
ho - ly mu - sic swell - ing, 
ye who droop in sad - ness, 



I 



Come 
Soft 
Come 



un 
are 
un 



to 
the 
to 



me 
tones 
me 



and 
which 
and 



I will give you 
raise the heavenly 
I will give you 



rest. . . 
hymn, 
rest. . . 



i 



CHAPTER V. 



IDOLS IN THE CAMP; OR, CHURCHIANITY VERSUS 
CHRISTIANITY. 

The impulse of Cornelius to render an homage more 
than was meet to the Divine messenger has always 
been the untutored instinct of Paganism and of a semi- 
Pagan form of Christianity. The heathen Lystrans 
but obeyed a similar natural and not altogether un- 
worthy impulse, when they brought oxen and garlands 
to the gates of the city and would have done sacrifice 
unto Paul and Barnabas. And St. Paul declares that 
the minister-worship which prevailed in the church 
of Corinth was paramount proof of carnality and a 
pagan spirit. " For while one saith, I am of Paul; 
and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal.'' 
Who, then, is Paul and who is Appollos but servants 
by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every 
man." 

In the case of Cornelius, however, there were addi- 
tional reasons why his reverence for the apostle 
should have assumed so extreme a form. He is sup- 
posed by most commentators and Bible historians to 
have been a Jewish proselyte, one who had found in 
the ethical teachings of Judaism that satisfaction for 
his soul's longings that he could find nowhere else in 
the wide world over which he traveled as a Roman 

85 



86 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



soldier. As such he was a sincere seeker after God, 
with that profound reverence for the truth which every 
noble soul feels. He was also a Roman, living in the 
time of the emperors, when the Caesars on the throne 
and even the Herods, the provincial governors, ex- 
acted an homage little short of worship. 

Besides, Cornelius was living in an oriental country 
and city. When in Rome, he did as the Romans. 
When m Judea why should he not do as the Jews ? 
Thus his military life and experience as a traveler in 
search of rest for his soul and his residence in the 
Orient under the shadow of a sacerdotalism as ex- 
treme as any that ever prevailed anywhere — all 
conspired to render him unusually obeisant to one 
whom the angel of God had designated as the min- 
ister-plenipotentiary and delegate apostolic of the 
great King of heaven and earth. In his respect for 
rank and admiration for the persons of men he was a 
true Roman. His idolatry has its parallel today. 
But this leads us to our theme. 

To our thought the semi-pagan elements in that 
which passes for Christian worship today group them- 
selves about two leading forms. 

1. That which sacrifices devotion to instruction. 

2. That which substitutes the human personality 
for the Divine. 

I . — Catholicism has always sacrificed instruction to 
what it calls devotion. It lifts up the altar and lets 
down the pulpit. It magnifies the " mass " and not 
the masses, although it professes to be their truest 
friend. But it is no true friendship for the people 



IDOLS IN THE CAMP 



87 



that sacrifices popular education on the altar of reli- 
gion. And yet, as far as the public worship of God is 
concerned, have not all Protestant denominations, 
possibly with the single exception of the Protestant 
Episcopal church, sacrificed the service on the altar 
of what it calls the sermon ? Have we not salted our 
sacrifice with the purely intellectual element until it is 
sometimes more salt than sacrifice, and even then 
with salt that has lost the savor of true sanctity ? We 
are not in bondage to the " beggarly elements " of the 
Jewish world — nor yet to the Greek world as far as the 
introduction of art into our temples is concerned, but 
are we not in partial bondage to the Greek elements 
of " wisdom " and " words," the hunger and thirst for 
learning, talent and eloquence, in what we call the 
"sacred desk?" It is a simple fact, easily verified, 
that the generality of non-church goers and indeed a 
large proportion of regular church attendants regard 
an invitation to church as a request to " hear our 
preacher " or hear my sermon. So much so, in fact, 
that it is often embarrassing for the minister himself 
to invite people to his church. The thought of public 
worship as both an individual and social duty and as 
implied in the call to the house of God does not seem 
to be present to the average mind and conscience of 
today. This is because the Sabbath meeting has 
come to mean with Protestants the Sunday preach- 
ing — chiefly this and nothing more. Hence the work- 
ingman naturally looks upon the church as a Sunday 
club and the pulpit as an ecclesiastical lecture platform 
and as naturally reasons that he has an equal right to 



88 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



his Sunday Labor Union meetings and his sermons on 
" the hfe that now is," his preaching in the form of 
labor discussions and debates. Indeed so prevalent 
is this popular conception of the character of the aver- 
age Protestant religious service that Mr. Bellamy in 
his " Looking Backward" pictures the great majority 
of churchmen of the year 2000 as attending church 
at home, vv^here they have private telephone connection 
with the auditoriums of the celebrated divines. In 
the 20th century the occupation of the lesser pulpit 
" stars" will be gone. Is not this a great gain on the 
score of economy of men, of labor, of strength 
and time over the old conventicle method of 
meeting together in a thousand different rooms called 
churches to hear preachers preach and soloists 
sing ! And from his standpoint Mr. Bellamy is 
right. We fear that Dr. Talmage, with all his good 
intentions, has, by the wholesale and retail distri- 
bution of his sermons, fostered the same idea. " May 
I not stay at home and read Talmage ? " Cer- 
tainly, with profit, if this matter of sermon-hearing is 
all there is of your Sunday-go-to-meeting religion. 
And certainly also the modern church member, official 
or otherwise, who looks upon his church as an eccle- 
siastical hotel where he takes his Sunday meals or 
meal rather — for one is usually sufficient for him — 
and pays his bill to the preacher, has the true concep- 
tion of the proper function of the organization to 
which he belongs, if " sermon-making" as it is called 
and " pulpit efforts " are the chief if not only uses for 
which the church exists. But Cornelius, the 



IDOLS IN THE CAMP 



89 



heathen, had the proper notion of the double function 
of a rehgious assembly when he said to Peter, " We 
are all here present before God" in the attitude first 
of humble worshipers and secondly, to " hear all 
things that are commanded thee of God to speak." 
The boarding-house idea of the " solemn assembly " 
of the saints is a degradation consequent upon bring- 
ing " Greeks into the temple." The p&rch of God's 
temple is not a Greek portico nor is the Christian as- 
sembly an academy. The New Testament idea of 
the function of the church is fourfold. It is a school 
or place of instruction. It is a home or place for rest 
and Christian fellowship. It is a temple or place of 
worship. It is a work-shop or place of labor for God 
and souls. " And they continued steadfastly in the 
apostle s doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of 
bread and in prayers. And fear came upon every 
soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the 
apostles.'' That the meeting for instruction was not 
considered the most important gathering of the 
disciples is manifest from the subsequent mention of 
the various lines of activity upon which the apostolic 
church was run. " And they, continuing daily with 
one accord in the temple and breaking bread at home, 
did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of 
heart, praising God and having favor with all the peo- 
ple. And the Lord added to the church daily those 
who were being saved." Gladness and singleness of 
heart at home; praise and blessing to God continually 
in the temple; favor with all the people on the streets 
- — these were the marks of the prosperity of the early 



90 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



church. But in this connection the synagogue or 
place of exposition and disputation is not mentioned. 
They had abandoned the upper room for the temple 
as a place of prayer and praise, and for the porch of 
that temple as a place of testimony and exhortation 
and for the homes of the people as a place of joy and 
fellowship. And all these tracks were used daily. 
The fourth line of instruction which we consider today 
the main track, was used, but possibly not oftener 
than once in seven days. 

The modern " institutional church," with its prac- 
tical lines of work, its kindergarten and night-schools 
for instruction, its gymnasium and manual-training 
department, its home and hospital services and its free 
and easy gospel meetings and sacred concerts, and 
these continued daily, seems to me to need only the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost to be a revival in modern 
form of that Jerusalem Christianity. The " institu- 
tional church " is our modern protest against the 
Protestant idea of the church as an institution w^hose 
sole object is to give Sunday lectures or entertain- 
ments to the properly dressed, if not ticketed, pew- 
holders. The true Church of Christ is like the sheet 
which w^as " knit at the four corners." It was meant 
to rest squarely on the four corner stones we have 
mentioned. A church that is purely devotional, with- 
out intelligence, is a " creeping thing;" one that adds 
intelligence to piety can fly but can not carry the 
heavy burdens of humanity; only the church that is 
four-cornered, that is a combined school, home, tem- 
ple and workshop, is " a four-footed beast of the earth," 
able to do God's work in the world. 



IDOLS IN THE CAMP 



91 



II. — Again, as man is a worshiping animal and he 
can not worship abstract principles or adore moral 
theories, the second form which his idolatry takes is 
the worship of some personal, human embodiment of 
truth and virtue. This the churchianity of today 
finds, or thinks it finds, in the so-called " popular pas- 
tor. " Such a church is usually so zealous in paying 
its devotions at this shrine that in case the popular 
pastor is followed by one who does not please, it 
can go in the strength of the meat received at the 
hands of his angelic predecessor many times forty 
days and forty nights. Now, we submit that the pop- 
ular adoration of " Jack in the pulpit, " for he must be 
such and not a John the Baptist who courts such adu- 
lation, is quite as reprehensible a form of Protestant 
superstition as Mariolatry or image-worship ever were, 
especially as it is so often followed by a new " iconoclas- 
tic controversy" over the body of a successor who 
can not be made into the form of any image. Let us 
have more men in the pulpit who have the manhood 
to reprove, as Peter did, such false worship, even though 
they have all his human nature, and we shall have a 
more manly Christianity in the pew. 

This species of worship is nothing new m ecclesias- 
tical history. It existed even in the days of the Jew- 
ish prophets and called forth from one of them, Zach- 
ariah, the following warning: " And the Lord said unto 
me. Take unto thee the instrument of a foolish shep- 
herd: For lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land 
which shall not visit those that be hidden, neither shall 
seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor 



92 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



bear that that standeth still; but he shall eat the flesh 
of the fat and tear the claws in pieces. Woe to the 
idol shepherd that leaveth the flock. The sword shall 
be upon his arm and upon his right eye; his arm shall 
be clean dried up and his right eye shall be utterly 
darkened." Zech. xi: 15-17. We have known this 
prophecy to be fulfilled — idol shepherds who once had 
power with God and taught the truth as it is in Jesus, 
their arms now " clean dried up and their right eyes 
utterly darkened." Better be as blunt as Peter, if not 
rude, better be as loth to receive praise as he was re- 
luctant to receive his visitors, than accept that flattery 
which Shakespeare says is " the bellows that blows up 
sin." What shall we say, then, of the minister that 
courts it and dispenses it with a lavish hand. Simply 
this, he is using " the instrument of a foolish shepherd. " 

Let our modern Peters understand that, as the 
church has a four-fold function to perform, so they 
have a four-fold office to discharge. As their hearers 
are not to be " hearers only," so the preachers are not 
to be preachers only. They are to be teachers, pas- 
tors, ministers or servants, and priests, in common 
with their lay brethren, leaders, simply, of the holy 
studies, experiences, labors, and devotions of the peo- 
ple. They are not the successors only of the scribes, 
or doctors of the law. They are to be doctors, el- 
ders of the people, levites and chief priests all in 
one. But as they are not to be called " Father," so 
let them not be called " Rabbi," Doctor," as if all 
their functions were discharged in the fulfillment of 
that peculiarly Protestant vocation. Modern Phari- 



IDOLS IN THE CAMP 



93 



seeism consists less in hypocrisy on the part of the 
leaders of the church than in one-sidedness or unwill- 
ingness to be all that God would have them be. 
They would all be educators. Of brothers, servants 
and fellow saints in the kingdom there is a lamentable 
lack. 

" The life is more than meat." To " kill and eat" 
is not the only command that proceeds from the thrice 
repeated voice of the Spirit. There are three other 
words of command: " Arise," and gird thyself for the 
Master's task. " Get thee down and go w^th them." 
" Condescend to men of low estate." Let not your 
garments be thought holier than theirs, for " the body is 
more than raiment," the soul of more value in the 
sight of God than any secular dress. " Doubting 
nothing." Let not "wrath or doubting" spot the 
hands which you have been lifting to me in prayer. 

Be all this to these men, Peter, teach them, walk 
by their side, work with them and pray for them and the 
brethren which accompany you will go and do likewise. 
Churchianity, eliminated from the pulpit will be quickly 
followed by its disappearance from the pew. 

It is not strange that if Peter-worship be en- 
couraged by the Peters it should be indulged in 
by the Corneliuses. Especially is this temptation 
made doubly dangerous where Cornelius is conscious 
that he holds in his single hands the reins of 
ecclesiastical government. On the canvas of a paint- 
ing at Rome, representing the crowning of a pope 
by the college of cardinals, is the inscription in Latin: 
" Whom they create they worship." Idols are always 



94 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



the " creatures of men's hands." The popular pulpit 
idol of the day is the man who does not presume to be 
either a leader of public opinion on religious themes, 
or a fearless and faithful exponent of the Divine 
law and gospel. He is a man subject to a lay censor- 
ship which amounts to virtual dictatorship. He is 
so far from being an infallible organ of religious teach- 
ing that he has resigned this function entirely and 
passed it over into the hands of that Protestant 
" college of cardinals," the " officiary " or " session " 
of the local church. We plead for more independence 
of thought and action on the part of the Protestant 
pastor. We do not plead for a restoration of Puri- 
tanical customs as to popular reverence for the clergy. 
There was a time in New England when the whole 
congregation arose as the minister entered the church 
and remained standing in respectful silence until he 
had seated himself in the pulpit. We do not plead for 
such an extreme of popular reverence. But it may 
be questioned if the irreverent spirit of our young 
America has not developed an extreme irreverence for 
dignities in the men and women of America to-day. 
Our boys and girls, instead of being taught to stand 
with uncovered or bowed heads while the minister 
passes, are taught by parental example if not by pre- 
cept, to assume at a very tender age the role of min- 
ister critics, if not satirists. " They are not afraid to 
speak evil of dignities." 

The natural reaction which follows the assertion on 
the part of the idolized pastor of his right and duty to 
preach the " whole counsel of God," and " keep back 



IDOLS IN THE CAMP 



95 



nothing that is profitable " to the people, is some form 
of persecution. Thus the same Lystrans, who one 
day would have done honor unto Paul and Barnabas 
as unto their gods, the next day stone them and drag 
them half-dead through the streets of the city. So 
congregations that have not the spirit of Cornelius 
have been known to fly as quickly from the one and 
same extreme of popular adoration to the other ex- 
treme of popular abuse. One day the password is 
" Hail," the next day it is " Crucify." 

Is it surprising, then, that the minister who knows 
this fickleness of our common human nature should be 
tempted to " withhold more than is meet, " from the peo- 
ple. Rev. H. L. Hastings gives expression to a most 
sententious remark when he says: " There was a time 
when, as Paul preached, Felix trembled, but now 
Felix sits in the front pew, and Paul trembles as he 
preaches." The newspapers sometimes hit the nail 
on the head even when commenting on church affairs. 
The following is going the rounds of the press. " In 
the days of John the Baptist, if a preacher preached 
the whole unsoftened truth and applied religion to 
practical life they cut off his head. In these days they 
cut off his salary. The new plan, as one says, is fully 
as efficacious as the old and avoids funeral expenses." 
When the preface to this volume was read to a cer- 
tain lady critic, the following was her observation on 
the paragraph which says, " Peter on the housetop 
seems to us the figure of the coming Christian minister; 
Cornelius on the doorstep, lifted up by Peter, seems 
to us the figure of the coming Christian layman," 



96 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



" There is one figure or figures," said she, " which you 
have omitted. It is the figure of the brethren who 
accompanied Peter trying to pull him down while he 
tries to lift Cornelius up." But these figures are in 
the next chapter. " And when Peter was come up 
to Jerusalem they that were of the circumcision con- 
tended with him, saying, ' Thou wentest in unto men 
uncircumcised and didst eat with them.' " To deprive 
the Gentiles of the Word of God was nothing wrong. 
It was nothing right to eat with the uncircumcized. It 
reminds one of those Jews who would not enter the 
precincts of Pilate's court lest they should be defiled, 
at the same time crying, " Away with Him, Crucify 
Him." These figures unfortunately still live. It is a 
greater sin in the eyes of some modern " ruler of the 
Jews " to try to save a sure-enough heathen or sinner 
of the Gentiles, if he happen to be of a lower caste, 
than it is to tarry at Jerusalem and do nothing in the 
line of missionary or soul-saving work. 

The cure for churchianity is simple. There is 
needed, first of all, a more devout intelligence in both 
pulpit and pew. Every wise minister has observed 
from his own experience that there is a kind of popu- 
larity which is always an indication of either superficial 
piety or the lack of spiritual intelligence in the pew. 
The only safe condition for a self-respectful relation 
between any minister and the people over which the 
Holy Spirit has appointed him is wise fidelity on 
the one hand and intelligent piety on the other. The 
worship of the priesthood will displace the worship of 
God in any church, among any people, where there 



IDOLS IN THE CAMP 



97 



exists a spirit of blind devotion to a man whose chief 
claim to consideration and respect is the ofBce he 
holds and the work he is set to do. And the only 
way to prevent the popular adoration of the man in the 
pulpit who possesses a large share of personal magnet- 
ism or foolish pride is a more intelligent piety in the 
church. We say intelligent piety. The piety and in- 
telligence must be conjoined or the church attendant 
possesses no adequate qualification for the exercise of 
a sympathetic judgment concerning the ministerial 
character or function. Intelligence without piety 
leads to the opposite error of irreverent criticalness 
and presumptuous fault-finding with those who are 
" over us in the Lord " and whom we should " esteem 
very highly in love for their works' sake." 

There is needed, in the second place, a form of 
local church government which is truly democratic 
and in harmony with the genius of our republican in- 
stitutions. Let the people rule. In the end they will 
come to themselves, though at times they may be 
seized with strange infatuations or misguided impulses. 
" You can fool some of the people all the time and all 
the people some of the time," said Mr. Lincoln, but 
you can not fool all the people all the time." There- 
fore, government is safer in the hands of the many 
than in the hands of the few. 

Of all forms of church government, as of political 
power, the worst is the aristocratic. Better is the 
autocratic. Best of all is the democratic. The Apostolic 
church, as can be readily seen from a careful perusal 
of the 15th chapter of Acts, which is the proper 



98 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



sequel to this loth chapter we are considering was 
democratic. "The apostles and elders, " the " bish- 
ops and pastors" of that day first considered the mat- 
ter of the admission of Gentiles to the church and dis- 
cussed it in council, but no decision was reached and 
no decrees passed until " the whole multitude of the 
disciples" had been consulted. The common people, 
thus honored, will never become idolators. 

Reverence for the church or even for the Bible 
may be carried to an extreme that really, if not con- 
sciously substitutes the form for the substance and 
the letter for the spirit. Life is before organization and 
the end is always greater than the means. We can 
not be too often reminded of this in these times when 
popular disrespect for religious institutions is too often 
met by a high churchism that is equally distant from a 
just and proper self respect, a true reverence for the 
Divine Head of the church and a tender regard for 
the welfare of men. 



PREFIX TO CHAPTER VI. 



And as he talked with hmt, he wetit in and findeth many come 
together; and he said tinto them^ Ye yourselves know how that it is 
an wilawful thing for a man that is a Jew to join himself or come 
unto 07ie of another nation; andyet ujito me hath God showed that 
I should not call any man commoji ortmclean.'" — Acts x: 27, 28. 

" Here we can not but recall what we have read in Jewish his- 
tory regarding the relation of the superior Jews to the occupa- 
tion of a tanner. Modern writers have related instances of a 
prejudice which to the Western mind must be simply preposter- 
ous. An ancient Rabbi said "It is impossible that the world 
can do without tanners, but woe unto that man who is a tanner." 
I remember that Simon Peter, primate of the apostles, the sen- 
ior disciple, lodged with one Simon, a tanner. The address is 
vaguely given, "whose house is by the seaside." The reason 
being that the Jews would not have tanneries in the town. Tan- 
neries were a necessity, a hated and detested necessity, but they 
must be kept as far out of the town as possible, in the sea, if the 
impious Jews could have had their way. The tanner was not 
allowed to have his place of business within fifty cubits of the 
town. He was kept at a greater distance still, if he happened 
to pursue his business at the west end of the town. If a man 
married without telling his bride that he was a tanner she could 
instantly demand a release from the nuptial vow. You see then 
how stubborn were the prejudices which the higher Jews enter- 
tained against the occupation of tanning and yet we read, as if it 
involved no extraordinary principle or secret, that Peter lodged 
or "tarried many days with one Simon, a tanner." — ^Joseph 
Parker. 



Let Me Die, 



P 



W. D. G. 



1. O God, my heart doth long for Thee, Let me die, let 

2. Thy sav- ingpow'r in me display, Let me die, let 

3. Oh, I must die to scoffs and jeers. Let me die, let 



=5: 

me die; 
me die 
me die 




Now set my soul at lib - er - ty, Let me die, 
I must be dead from day to day. Let me die, 
I must be free from slavish fears, Let me die, 

— I ^— A— A -4^ — 5 — i-r-e'- 



let 

let me die. 
let me die. 




To all the trifling things of earth, They are to me of lit - tie worth, 
Un - to the world and its applause. To all the customs, fashions, laws, 
So dead that no desire shall rise, To pass for good,or great.or wise, 



rall. et. dim. 



=1= 



1^- 



My Saviour calls, I'm going forth. 
Of those who take the humbling cross, 
In an - y but ray Saviour's eyes, 



Let 
Let 
Let 



me 
me 
me 



— J- — ^ ^ 



die, let me die. 

die, let me die. 

die, let me die. 

I 



V 



— #- 

— I — 
— 
— I — 

— ^- 



9 



Begin at once to drive the nail, 

Let me die, let me die : 
Oh, RuflFer not my heart to fnil. 

Lot me die, let me die; 
Jesus, 1 look to Thee for ])()wer. 
To help me to endure this hour 
When crucified by sov'reign pow'r, 
I shall die, I shall die. 



Now I am dead ; then, Lord, to Thee 
I shall live, I shall live; 

M}" time, my strength, my all to Thee 
I do give, 1 do give. 

Oh, how the Son doth make me free, 

Then, Lord, I give my all to Thee; 

For time and for eternity, 
I shall live, I shall live. 



CHAPTER VI. 



comradeship; or, the cure for caste. 

And who was Simon, the son of Jonas, that he 
should call any man common ? He who had left his 
rude fisherman's boat and nets and the cheap house by 
the seashore to follow the fortunes of the Nazarene 
certainly had not much in which to glory " concerning 
the flesh." Moreover, Peter had at times exhibited a 
most ignoble spirit. He scarcely rose to the dignity 
of a " page '* when, in the court of the high priest's 
palace, he sat with the servants and cursed and swore 
that he knew not the man of Galilee. He whose 
spirit as well as speech betrayed him on that occasion 
showed himself at another time a most unchivalrous 
defender of his Lord. If he had been a true and val- 
iant knight, and not a rather cowardly " squire," he 
would not have drawn his sword upon an unarmed 
retainer of Caiaphas' household. He would have 
chosen a foeman worthy of his steel. As it was, the 
high priest's servant was quite worthy of Peter's rank. 
For, apart from the dignity imposed by his Christian 
calling, Peter was nobody — one of " the base things of 
the world and the things that are despised, yea and the 
things that are not " which God did choose " to bring 

lOI 



102 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



to naught the things that are; that no flesh should glory 
before Him." 

Had it been the apostle Paul who was in the habit 
of calHng men common, one should not have been so 
much surprised. For he had whereof he might " glory 
in the flesh; of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of 
Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the 
law, a Pharisee; as touching zeal, persecuting the 
church; as touching the righteousness which is in the 
law, found blameless. " Paul might have manifested 
an aristocratic spirit with some show of reason for he 
was superior to other men in all those things which are 
" highly esteemed among men." He was of pure Jew- 
ish blood, liberally educated, of distinguished ability 
and with an energy corresponding to his talents, above 
all, of irreproachable moral character and perhaps, 
before he became one of " the sect of the Nazarenes" 
possessed of some wealth. But Peter, who was /le that 
he should exhalt himself before men } 

Perhaps he did not do so. Certainly the traditional 
representation of Peter as the first pope is obviously 
false. Perhaps all that is meant by the words " common 
and unclean " in this connection is " sinner of the Gen- 
tiles." Yet this was a manifestation of the caste 
spirit; yea, the worst form of it, the most unchristian 
of all. For did not Jesus eat and drink with " publi- 
cans and sinners " ? And could not Peter learn from 
his example to condescend to men of low moral as 
well as temporal estate. Well did the master say to 
this same apostle when he objected to the act of feet- 
washing. " What I do, thou knowest not now, but 



COMRADESHIP 



103 



thou shalt know, hereafter." The significance of that 
profoundly humble and condescending act on the part 
of the Master, Peter was for the first time beginning 
to really learn. It was the Christ's rebuke to all 
caste — especially of the Pharisaic type. 

As to the actual existence of this caste spirit in all 
its forms today — it is quite superfluous to go into the 
proof of it. No one who has had opportunity for 
wide observation will hesitate for a moment to declare 
its prevalence. Says Dr. A. T. Pierson: " The sim- 
ple fact is (and we know it) that the communion of 
saintliness is displaced by the communion of respect- 
ability. Our churches are becoming the quarters of a 
monopoly, and the workingman sees and feels it. And 
it has come to be a fact that I, as a Christain minister, 
no longer propose to deny or dispute. There is no 
real democracy in the church of Jesus Christ in this 
day, with a few startling and glorious exceptions. 
There is, in some cases, an oligarchy, the rule of a 
few; in some cases a plutocracy — the rule of the rich; 
in some cases an aristocracy; at the best — the rule of 
the cultured and really higher classes; but, in very few 
instances, a true Christian democracy, such as Jesus 
Christ meant the church of God to be." 

Perhaps this is an extreme statement, although a 
truthful report of observations taken within the field 
of a single denomination. 

"What may be truthfully said is this," says Dr. 
Washington Gladden " that there are local 
churches — a considerable number of them — whose 
administration is such that they hinder more than they 



104 THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 

help the progress of the kingdom. There are local 
churches which are, essentially, religious clubs. The 
principles on which they are organized, the methods 
of their administration are all assimilated to those of the 
religious club. They welcome only those whose opin- 
ions and tendencies are similar to their ow^n; they take 
no pains to attract to their membership those who 
would not be congenial; they present before the 
community a certain attitude of exclusiveness. " Dr. 
Josiah Strong, in the Nezv Era, gives some striking 
instances of the exhibition of this spirit. " In a prayer- 
meeting in a prom.inent church in the East, a gentle- 
man rose and said ' I called on that man \vho saved 
the lives of so many at the fire the other day and 
found that his family are poor, and that they attend 
no church; I invited him to our church; and now, I 
hope, brethren, when they come, if they do come, 
you will give them a cordial welcome, and make room 
for them in your pews. ' When he took his seat the 
wealthiest and most influential man in the church 
arose and said: * I don't want any such man or family 
in my pew; I don't want them near my pew; I don't 
want them in this church.' The pastor of that 
church was angry and sinned not, and when he arose 
to rebuke that spirit he said: * I will not cease my 
efforts until yonder door swings in to the lightest 
touch of the poorest man in this cit}-. ' But that pas- 
tor, though a man of great ability and of national 
reputation, was presently unseated. 

" In another prayer-meeting a member said: ' I want 
your prayers for a man who has been a slave to drink. 



COMRADESHIP 



105 



•3f -sf * Pray for him; he's a gentleman; he's no 
'bum.' He's worth $200,000; he's worth saving.' 
Preference for ' the man with a gold ring, in goodly 
apparel' is not always so frankly expressed, but this 
speaker represents a large class who ' have the faith 
of our Lord Jesus Christ with respect to persons. ' 

" There is a church in the Mississippi valley which is 
' rich and increased with goods and hath need of noth- 
ing ' — nothing except some Christianity, whose pastor, 
it is said, when some working girls presented them- 
selves for membership, discouraged them, not on the 
ground that the evidence of their Christian experience 
was unsatisfactory, but because there would be no 
' affinity, ' no * congeniality, ' between them and his 
flock. It was that same church of which the story is 
told that when a reformed drunkard presented himself 
for membership, he was informed by one of the officers 
that he believed there were no vacancies in the mem- 
bership of the church just at that time. ' I was a 
stranger, and ye took me not in. ^- ^ Inasmuch 
as ye did it not to one of the least of these ye did it 
not to me. ' " 

Dr. J. M. Buckley tells the story of a judge of much 
ability in a Western town whose family had belonged 
to three different churches. He was asked if he had 
changed his religious sentiments so often. " Oh, no," 
said he, " When we first settled here, there was only 
one church in the town, and that was the Methodist. 
We went to it and were happy enough until the Pres- 
byterian came in. My wife said that it was certain 
that they were going to draw the cream of the society 



I06 THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 

of the place into it. They erected a better structure 
than the Methodists had, and called an educated and 
refined minister and a very prepossessing man. We 
joined them and felt very happy there until the Epis- 
copalians came in. They built a very handsome 
Gothic church. My wife said that the children were 
just growing up and that they ought to have all the 
advantages of society that they could get and in fact 
she observed that she had always liked the Hturgy 
and so, notvvithstanding we had been very happy in 
the Presbyterian church and liked the minister very 
much, we drew out and went into the Episcopal. 
There we are now. Perhaps we shall stay there till 
we die. But I am always afraid that the Unitarians 
or somebody else will come in here, and get up a 
more select coterie, and then we will have to go; and 
that," says the judge " is the way it comes that I have 
changed my church relations three times without 
changing my sentiments." 

Similar incidents have come under the writer's ob- 
servation, two of which might be mentioned, if further 
evidence of the existence of this spirit in our churches 
were necessary. In a certain Western city the fruits 
of a Summer gospel meeting held in a tent — an outing 
rendered necessary by the closeness of the old church, 
a section of which had been sold to make way for a 
business block, walling up the auditorium completely 
on one side — were referred to contemptuously by an 
official member as "the rag-tag and bob-tail" of 
society. Yet these converts all continued faithful and 
in the subscription taken for the new church building 



COMRADESHIP 



107 



they all gave and gave more liberally, according to 
their ability, than the aforesaid gentleman who thus 
politely stigmatized them. They were not cordia'ly 
welcomed to the society because it was not thought 
they would add much to its financial strength and 
social standing. 

In another Eastern town, a lady who prides herself 
on her social standing, took such umbrage at the 
pastor for receiving certain poor but worthy women 
into the church, " of whom," she said, " it would take 
a dozen to make one respectable member," that she 
withdrew from attendance on the author's ministry. 
It would be well if all who are controlled by such a 
spirit would retire permanently from all connection 
with our churches, until they can learn as Peter did, 
to call no man common or unclean. 

But what is the cure for this acknowledged evil ? 
Is there not a balm in Gilead that will remedy such a 
grievous sin ? We think there is. Here are some 
vials, not of wrath, but of medicine, which we would 
prescribe as a cure. Taken singly they will not effect 
a perfect healing. Taken all together we think they 
will. 

I. A Thorough Conversio7i. — At the time Peter fell 
down on his knees before Jesus in the fishing boat and 
cried: " Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O, 
Lord," he would not have called any man common 
or unclean. The overpowering sense of his common 
human weakness and his need of the one Lord and 
Savior of us all would have overcome all his moral 
prejudices. But it is possible that spiritual pride had 



I08 THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 

in some measure sprung up with the rise m Peter's 
fortunes. He had no thorn in the flesh to keep him 
humble as Paul had, so that when he began to reap 
the " hundred-fold in this life " w^hich Jesus had prom- 
ised to those who had forsaken even their " little all " 
to follow him, Peter, like Jeshurun " waxed fat and 
kicked." Not that he had grown rich in houses and 
lands, but " fathers and mothers and brothers and 
sisters." We believe that w^hen he went up upon the 
housetop to pray he was " exalted above measure." 
On a subsequent occasion he fell again into the same 
sin. (Gal. ii: 1 1-14.) 

Says an eminent religious writer, " The regenerating 
influence of the Holy Spirit in the beginning of the 
Christian life destroys the aristocratic spirit, when the 
eyes that have been filled with tears of repentance are 
filled with tears of joy, when the heart that has long 
been hardened by the sense of guilt receives the 
Divine comforts. The eunuch of great authority under 
Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, accepts baptism 
from Philip, the humblest follower of Christ. When 
Saul passes into the glorious liberty of God's dear 
children, he seeks those whom he persecuted. On 
the day of Pentecost, " They that believed were 
together and had all things in common." No instance 
can be produced from the Scriptures or from modern 
times, of a genuine conversion, marked by a lively 
hope, the love, joy, peace and other fruits of the 
Spirit which, in its first exhibitions, did not reveal the 
entire destruction of this spirit. Subsequently men 
and women yield to the influence of former habits of 



COMRADESHIP 



109 



thought, action, speech and association; but during 
the complete reign of the new Hfe when the mind is 
filled with the love of God and with the peace which 
passes all understanding, they look upon every one as 
a brother that has obtained like precious faith and see 
beneath the roughest garments the lineaments of a 
a man in Jesus Christ." 

That this must be so is apparent from a considera- 
tion of the nature of the tie which binds Christian be- 
lievers together. It is not the possession of property in 
common. The Christians of Jerusalem, who practiced 
communism, St. James admonishes on the subject of 
having respect of persons." Communism does not 
necessarily produce the spirit of true fraternity. Nor 
is the tie that binds, the possession of gifts, intel- 
lectual or spiritual, in common. But it is the pos- 
session of a " common salvation." The true children 
of the king recognize each other without any other in- 
troduction than that of the Divine Spirit. The invisible 
church is a secret society whose grips and pass-words 
are known only to those who have been initiated into 
the mysteries of the kingdom. It is a family whose 
condition of membership is blood-relationship to the 
Lord Jesus Christ. " Who were born, not of blood, 
nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, 
but of God." 

But the lesson Peter learned was one of social 
recognition. Had he been unwilling to join himself 
socially to the two household servants of Cornelius, 
calling them in and lodging them, going with them on 
the journey and entering into the home of Cornelius, 



no THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 

he could not have preached the Gospel to them; for 
they did not come to him, they sent for him and sent 
for him to come into their house. And Peter w^s 
commanded to go and, after the sermon, accepted 
their invitation to "tarry with them certain days." 
To be friendly with certain brothers or sisters in the 
church, whom we decline to recognize on the street; 
to pray for them in the revival meeting and yet refuse 
to visit them at their homes, especially in times of 
affliction, is to exhibit a patronizing spirit which is no 
more truly fraternal, which is quite as unchristian as 
that more avowed assertion of superiority which would 
refuse all friendly recognition whatsoever. Is this that 
pattern of the perfect society of heaven to which all 
true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are entitled to 
admission and of which the church on earth is to be 
an example ? When we reach heaven will we recog- 
nize each other in the multitude about the throne, but 
fail to know each other as we pass along the streets of 
the New Jerusalem ? 

II. — A second vial we open is Sanctified Common 
Sense. When Peter said " Not so, Lord," he was in a 
kind of stupor. He was in a trance. If he had been 
fully awake he might not have seen things as he did. 
Peter on the housetop, overcome by the faintness of 
hunger and heat and dazzled by the resplendent vision, 
was not in possession of that full stock of common 
sense which usually characterized his later utterances. 
So when people are dazzled by the " vain pomp and 
glory of this world" at some fashionable party or re- 
ception, captivated by the brilliant costumes, the high 



COMRADESHIP 



III 



sounding titles, the badges of worldly honor, the 
court ideal of society with its graded ranks and stately 
etiquette, may seem attractive. But a little subse- 
quent reflection in the cool air of night, after the fitful 
fever of the ball room is over, suffices to show to 
common sense that it is mostly a vain show and that 
it is impossible that these distinctions should all rest 
upon merit rather than upon a desire for the praise of 
men. It is said that the priests of ancient Rome could 
not look into each other's faces as they passed on the 
streets without smiling at the thought of the bare-faced 
fraud they were engaged in perpetuating. This was 
at the time when the priests and philosophers had lost 
faith in the popular religion. Society also has its su- 
perstitions. It seems to me that in the last decade of 
this democratic century people who cherish the aristo- 
cratic spirit, however solemnly they may observe, 
from force of worldly custom, the laws of fashionable 
life, must laugh in their sleeves at their own folly 
when the farce is over for the night. It is too late in 
the day of the world's history for people to cherish 
such delusions. The common sense of the race ought 
to rescue it from such a snare. 

As Peter, the unschooled and unlettered fisherman, 
advances in that culture of both head and heart which 
we believe to be one of the fruits of Christianity, God 
teaches him that true culture, like true religion, 
abolishes this spirit. It does not say " stand off, I am 
wiser or better than thou." It is a sophomore culture 
that looks down upon the members of " the lower 
classes" even as it is a Pharisaic religion which says 



I 12 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



"This people that know not the law are cursed." 
The law of Christ is thus expressed : " Ye that are 
strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. " Ig- 
norance, so far from being an excuse for the wise 
man's neglect, constitutes a claim upon his superior 
knowledge, just as vice, instead of affording a plea 
for the holy man's condemnation, constitutes a call 
upon him for its reformation. True Christian culture 
and the true Christian religion recognize this law of 
the ministry of the higher to the lower. The caste 
spirit is a flat contradiction of the fundamental law of 
Christ : " He that would be chief among 5^ou let him 
be the servant of all." 

III. — Still a third vial is a True Christian Aristoc- 
racy founded upon this law of Christ. Carh le sa3^s : 
" In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful 
making of others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie. 
The chief of men is he who stands in the van of men, 
fronting the peril which frightens back all others, 
which, if it be not vanquished, will drown the others. 
Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a 
crown of thorns." And again the same writer gives 
utterance to the same truth. " The ignorant submit 
to the wise ; for so it is in all, even the rudest com- 
munities, man never yields himself to brute force but 
always to moral greatness. Thus the universal title 
of respect from the oriental sheik, from the sachem 
of the red Indians, down to our English sir, implies 
only that he whom we wish to honor is our senior.'' 

Far be it from us to deny that there are ranks and 
gradations among men based upon distinctions of true 



COMRADESHIP 



moral worth and also degrees of glory in Christ's 
kingdom. But such worth will manifest itself in a 
sense of unworthiness and such glory is always recog- 
nized as a grace. " What have we then which we 
have not received and who maketh us to differ.?" 

Besides, there is an aristocracy based on custom 
v/hich, when of long standing, often becomes compar- 
atively worthy of respect. The aristocrat " to the 
manor born " is not so haughty as the one whom for- 
tune or popular favor has suddenly raised above his 
fellows. A " codfish aristocracy" is always the most 
offensively self-assertive; the " shoddy genteel " is usu- 
ally as contemptible in his manners as he is cheap in the 
material of which he is made. The truly elect lady or 
gentleman is one who is apparently and, under most 
circumstances, really unconscious of his superiority to 
others. " Only a spurious refinement or a tottering 
dignity requires offensive self-assertion. Either can 
bear contact with men and women of any class." 

IV. — Another vial is Coiirtesy or a Due Consideration 
for the Rights and Feelings of Others. The tender- 
hearted Cowper writes: 

" I would not enter upon my list of friends 
The man (though of polished manners 
And of fine sense, yet lacking sensibility) 
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. 
An inadvertent step may crush the snail 
That crawls at evening in the public path, 
But he who has humanity, forewarned, 
Will tread aside and let the reptile live." 

Ours is an age when " societies for the prevention of 
cruelty to animals " flourish, yet, like Peter, while we 



114 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



would not " kill and eat," we yet manifest a worse in- 
humanity to man. We call men common and crush 
them beneath the feet of cruel indifference or neglect 
when pride is too much ashamed of itself to raise its 
hand or tongue to strike. An indifference to the social 
and spiritual need of the " common people " as exhib- 
ited in our caste churches is a form of inhumanit}^ 
which the masses so keenly feel that they will not come 
into an ecclesiastical atmosphere where such coldness 
reigns. For they rightly judge that entire lack of 
sympathy is only a polite form of inhospitality. 

V. — This leads us to perscribe a fifth remedy, viz, 
Personal Contact zvith Men of Every Class. Peter 
learned more through his personal intercourse with the 
men sent from Cornelius than from any other source. 
It was through personal touch with these Gentiles that 
he learned how uncommon they were. One reason 
why men, as a rule, are less dominated by the caste 
spirit than women, is because they come more into 
contact with the world; are less confined to the four 
walls of their own homes. Business men know better 
how the other half lives than society women. They 
have customers that are poor j^et strictly honest, others 
that are rich and yet would rob them if they could re- 
spectably do so. The politician of high social position 
meets poor men whose votes can not be bought and 
learns from observation that " the rank is but the 
guinea's stamp. A man's a man for a' that and a' that." 
If our American women, with all their liberty, would 
mingle more fully with all classes and conditions of 
people they would come to Pope's conclusion that 



COMRADESHIP 



''Worth makes the man and want of it the fellow, 
The rest is all but leather and prunella." 

Likewise will co-operation in the work of life on 
the part of those who labor with brain and those who 
work with brawn bring the same conviction. A gentle- 
man stood on the Brooklyn Bridge watching a tug 
drawing after it an ocean vessel. He remarked in jest 
to the bride who stood at his side: " Such is life. Man 
is the tug that draws the so-called weaker vessel." 
"Just so," remarked the lady, " woman is the vessel 
that carries the heavy freight." Standing on the 
bridge of some sociological theory it may look, as it 
does to Mr. Bellamy, that one-half of humanity are 
drawing the stage coach and the others riding on 
the top. But when the capitalist and the laborer 
come to understand each other in the only way that 
such a thing is possible, by personal contact and 
co-operation, it will be seen that the burdens of 
life are not so unequally divided after all, and a senti- 
ment of mutual respect, now so much needed, will be 
developed. 

VI. — Our sixth vial is Certain Convictions Regarding 
the Redemption of Christ and the Coming of His King- 
dom. We must recognize the great fact that the whole 
world is redeemed. Even its " four-footed beasts 
of the earth and fowls of the air and creeping things. " 
" The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in 
pain until now," " waiting for the revealing of the sons 
of God." The earth itself is no longer under a curse, 
but under the blessing of the cross. The very land of 
our globe is being reclaimed from savagery by the 
hand of Christian civilization. 



Il6 THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 

"The world we live in wholly is redeemed; 
Not man alone, but all that man holds dear; 
His orchard and his maize — forget-me-nots 
And hearts-ease in his garden and the wild 
Aerial blossoms of the untamed wood 
That makes its savag'ry so homelike — all 
Have felt Christ's sweet love watering their roots. 
There are no Gentile oaks, no Pagan pines; 
The grass beneath our feet is Christian grass; 
The wayside weed is sacred unto him." 

If God, through the blood of the everlasting cov- 
enant, has thus sanctified nature, how much more has 
He redeemed man, both by the blood of the Lamb 
and by the restraining, if not renewing, influences of 
His Holy Spirit. 

"There's not a pirate in the Indian Ocean, 
God dwells not in, with tides of pure emotion, 
Seeking to hallow, sanctify, inspire 
And lift him from that hell of inward fire 
Whose scorching madness desolates, defiles, 
Degrades his spirit in those barbarous isles, 
Where gory cannibals lap human blood, 
And gnash their teeth upon half living food 
Of man and brothers; God is not afar. 
He worketh there as where the angels are, 
Seeking to change those human wolves to men, 
While angels breathe from Heaven Amen, Amen." 

The man who has been up on the housetop and seen 
this latter day vision will have respect for the Divine 
image in every man, and regard no man as utterly lost 
since Christ has died. 

Vn. — The last vial we open is, A sei-ious Contempla- 
tion of Oni' Lattc}' End. The spade of the grave-digger 
is the great leveler. It does not " level up." Noth- 
ing but the life in Christ can do that. Death always 



COMRADESHIP 



ii; 



"levels down." But, it is well enough for us to 
remember, when, lifted up by pride we are likely to fall 
into this snare of the Devil, that, 

" Imperial Caesar, dead, and turned to clay, 
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away." 

Nature at least is no respecter of persons. Our 
bodies shall all turn to the same kind of dust and clay. 

" A Brahmin on a lotus pod 
Once wrote the holy name of God. 
Then, planting it, he asked in prayer 
For some new fruit, unknown and fair. 
A slave near by, who bore a load, 
Fell fainting on the dusty road. 
The Brahmin, pitying, straightway ran 
And lifted up the fallen man. 
The deed scarce done, he stood aghast 
At touching one beneath his caste. 
' Behold ! ' he cried, ' I am unclean. 
My hands have clasped the vile and mean.' 
God saw the shadow on his face 
And wrought a miracle of grace. 
The buried seed arose from death 
And bloomed and fruited at his breath. 
The stock bore up a leaf of green 
On which these mystic words were seen. 
' First count all men of equal caste, 
THEN COUNT THYSELF THE LEAST AND 
LAST.' 

The Brahmin, with bewildered brain, 
Beheld the will of God writ plain. 
Transfigured, then, in sudden light. 
The slave stood sacred in his sight. 
Thereafter in the Brahmin's breast 
Abode God's peace, and he was blest." 



PREFIX TO CHAPTER VII. 



''''And Cornelius said, Four days ago, until this hour, I was 
keeping the ninth hour of prayer in my house; and behold, a rnan 
stood before me in bright apparel, and saith, Cornelius, thy prayer 
is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of 
God. Send, therefore, to foppa a?id call unto thee Simon, who is 
surnamed Peter; he lodgeth in the house of Siition a ta7iner, by the 
seaside.'' — Acts x: 30-32. 

"We err in the comparative estimate we form of great and 
small. Imagine a political economist computing the value of 
such a life as this of Dorcas. He views men in masses; consid- 
ers the economic well-being of society on a large scale; calculates 
what is productive of the greatest good for the greatest number. 
To him the few coats and garments made for a few poor people 
would be an item in the world's well-being, scarcely worthy of 
being taken into the reckoning. Let the historian estimate her 
worth. The chart of time lies unrolled before him. The fall of 
dynasties and the blending together of races, the wars and revo- 
lutions of nations that have successively passed across the 
world's stage— these are the things that occupy him. What are 
acts like hers in the midst of interests such as these, and of con- 
templations so large ? All this is beneath the dignity of history. 
Or again, let us summon a man of larger contemplations still. 
To the astronomer, lifting his clear eye to the order of the stars, 
this planet itself is but a speck. To come down from the uni- 
verse to the thought of a tiny earth is a fell descent, but to de- 
scend to the thought of an humble female working at a few gar- 
ments, were a fall indeed. Now rise to the Mind of which all 
other minds are but emanations — and this conception of grand 
and insignificant is not found in His nature. Human intellect, 
as it arises to the great, neglects the small. The Eternal mind 
condescends to the small; or rather, with it there is neither 
great nor small. It has divided the rings of the earthworm with 
as much microscopic care as the orbits in which the planets 
move. It has painted the minutest feather on the wing of the 
butterfly as carefully as it has hung the firmament with the sil- 
ver splendor of the stars. Great and small are words which 
have only reference to us." 

— Fred. W. Robertson. 



John Sullivan Dwight 

AaddiUti con muio. 



True Rest. 



-0- -9 -m- " 9 ' 0 0- 



SCHUSEKT. 

-f-^ bzd^ 



Rest 
Deep 



not quitting 
de - vo - tion 



-J-4- 



The bu - sy ca - reer, 
Nowhere hath knelt, 

4— 



Rest is 
Full - er 



the 



-I — I- 



fit- ting Of self to its sphere. "lis the brook's mo-tion, 
mo- tion Heart nev-er felt. 'Tis lov-ing and serv-ing, The 



--I -r-4—A- 

Z^l N> 



-9- ~9- -<5^ 

Clear without strife, 
high-est and best, 



Flee-ing to o - cean Af ter its hfe. 
Onward, unswerving, And that's true rest. 



^ — F — ^- 



Consecration, 



Samuel Davis, 



W. D. G. 




1. Lord, I amThine.en- tire - lyThine. Purchased and saved by blood Divine; 

2. Thine would I live, Thine would I die, BeThine thro' all e - ter - ni - ty; 

3. Here, at that cross where flows the blood That bought my guil - ty soul for God. 



7^ € — ^ — f—t- €-r^ 



:t==t 



:t=t 





With full con-sent Thine I would be. And own Thy sov'reign right in me. 
The vow is past be-j'ond repeal, And now I set the solemn seal. 
Thee, my new Mas- ter, now I call. And con-se - crate to Thee my all. 



CHAPTER VII. 



LOYALTY AND DEVOTION; OR, A CONSECRATED LIFE. 

It has been said that the angel v/ho stood before 
Cornehus in bright apparel may have been the Lord 
Jesus Himself. Peter, in his account of the matter, 
says, " he told us how he had seen the angel standing 
in his house." (Rev. Ver.) If the Lord Jesus appeared 
to Paul more than once in a vision why may He not 
have appeared to Cornelius } 

On closer examination of the Scripture, however, it 
appears that Paul v/as in a trance at Jerusalem when 
he " savv^ Him saying unto him, make haste and get 
thee quickly out of Jerusalem." (Acts xxii: i8.) It was 
only " an angel of the God whose I am, whom also I 
serve," who stood by him on the ship. (Acts xxvii: 
23.) The only appearances of the Lord of glory 
made " openly," as was this appearance to Cornelius, 
since the ascension, were to Paul on the Damascus 
road, to Stephen when dying and to John on the isle 
of Patmos. In all these instances our Lord was seen 
upon His throne in the heavens. 

But He has another throne in the human heart. 
" Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." This is the testi- 
mony of every spirit that is of God. And the spirits 

who give this testimony are not all disembodied spirits 

121 



122 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



or Spirits of another world. Men, as well as angels, 
can testify that " the Comforter, which is the Holy 
Ghost," is come and that in the persons of conse- 
crated disciples, the Lord Jesus has become, as it 
were, reincarnate. Peter at this time was one of 
those with whom Jesus Christ lodged, not " many 
days" but " always," And now Peter is sent that the 
same Holy Spirit which had made his body His temple 
may, like fire taken from this altar, kindle an answer- 
ing flame in the sanctuary of Cornelius' heart and 
home. 

Bishop Newman says: " The need of our age is a 
revised version of the Holy Scriptures, of which the 
colporteur himself is a sample, bound not in calf or 
leather, but in flesh and blood, translated into the ver- 
nacular of every day life, known and read of all men." 
This would, in a sense, be "the Word made fiesh " 
again to-day. And we need just such a new edition 
of " the Life of Christ," vvTitten not by Beecher or 
Farrar or Geikie or Edersheim, but by the Spirit of 
the living God. We need millions of such volumes 
circulated throughout the world. 

In such works, however, there can be no slavish 
copying of the Savior as a pattern. There must be 
" copy " for the type-setter before there can be books, 
but books are not made on the copy-book plan. For, 
back of the type-setting and the printing, is the writ- 
ing of the author. This, if a true work of art, is an 
inspiration. So the consecrated life is an in- 
spiration. Such a life is a law of righteousness, a 
prophecy of hope, a psalm of praise, a gospel of 



LOYALTY AND DEVOTION 



123 



peace, an epistle of love, an act of a true apostle, a 
revelation of heaven. And such is manifestly the 
work which God, by His Spirit, would accomplish in 
human hearts. 

I. — But is it possible to accomplish such a work under 
the ordinary conditions of human life ? With one-third 
of our time spent in sleep, and another sixth part in 
eating and drinking, the time afforded for mental, 
moral and manual activity is reduced by one-half. 
Besides 

"Art is long and time is fleeting, 

And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
Funeral marches to the grave." 

Further, if we all had two Sabbaths, or rest days, 
as the teachers throughout the land and their pupils 
do, less than one-third of our days, unless we include 
a long vacation in the summer, could be given to 
purely spiritual rest or labor. The eight-hour day for 
the workingman would give him one-third of the 
twenty-four hours for the discharge of domestic, social 
and public duties, out of which, if he did his whole 
duty as a householder, a neighbor and a citizen, he 
would not have much left for " duties to self and 
duties to God." But, according to moral philosophy, 
these constitute two-thirds of the whole duty of man. 
Then we must deduct from this remainder the time 
consumed by interruptions, the entertainment of visit- 
ors, journeyings and movings from place to place, social 
introductions, common conversation, etc. How little 
a balance is left for the main work of life ? Unless 



124 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



there can be a conjunction of holy and common things 
in the ordinary wall<: and intercourse of Hfe, it is evi- 
dent that such a great work can not have our time, 
nor any considerable portion thereof. 

But that such a connection is possible all the coin- 
cidences of this chapter show. " As he talked with 
him, he went in." As Peter thought on the vision 
he answered the call at the door. " And he took 
them the same hour of the night and washed their 
stripes and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. 
And he brought them into his house, and set meat before 
them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. " 
Acts xvi: 33, 34. What a mingling of the clean 
and the unclean, the sacred and the secular, is here 
recorded in the story of the Philipian jailer's conver- 
sion. Is not a similar mixture possible in every life ? 

It must be evident also that the performance com- 
plete of any particular self-appointed or even God-given 
task is not the chief end of life. It is not only liable 
at any moment to be cut short by death, but the Spirit 
of God Himself may cut it short, if not by counter- 
manding a previous order, yet by calling a halt to 
further movements in that direction. He who is per- 
fectly obedient to the voice of the Spirit must expect 
to be thus arrested in full career, as Peter's reflections 
were upon the housetop, and as his sermon at Caesarea 
was by the descent of the Holy Ghost. Yet the con- 
secrated man under such circumstances may always 
know that his work for that occasion and on that line 
is substantially done. 

Again, from these considerations it must be appar- 



LOYALTY AND DEVOTION 



125 



ent that being and not doing is, after all, the great ob- 
ject of human existence. Not any form of exercise, 
moral, mental or manual, is the chief end of life. Rela- 
tively some of these forms of activity may be nobler 
than others, but essentially they derive their nobleness 
entirely from their contributions to the one noble end — 
the attainment of the Divine likeness. Not to effect an 
act, but achieve a character, this is the true work of life. 
Not prayer even, much less thought or action, is the 
" one thing needful. " Mary did not choose this one 
thing when " she sat at Jesus' feet and listened to His 
Word." She chose a "good part" — a better part 
than Martha's service — as head service is higher than 
hand service. David did not obtain this one thing 
when he said " one thing have I desired of the Lord 
that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house 
of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the 
beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple, " unless 
this worship of his wrought true worth of soul. 
Neither did Moses when he prayed that God would 
establish the work of his hands unless through this 
that other prayer was answered: " Let Thy work 
appear unto Thy servant and Thy glory unto their 
children." The true work of God and man working 
together is the attainment of holy character. " To be 
or not to be," that is the question, not only of im- 
mortality but of that eternal life which means 
quality rather than quantity of existence. The young 
man that was told to sell all that he had and give to 
the poor did not in that command receive the true 
Christian commission. His benevolence was to be 



126 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



preparatory work. He was thus to become " free to 
serve." "Come, take up thy cross daily and follow 
me." This is the true Christian call. "This one 
thing I do," said Paul, " I press toward the mark." 
The struggle after moral perfection, this is the true 
Christian calling, and this occupation can be followed 
day and night. 

This is the peculiarity of the Christian vocation; in 
other walks of life this is not possible. The sol- 
dier is not doing the one thing of military life when he 
goes into winter quarters or lays down to sleep upon 
his arms. For protracted camp-life is not campaign- 
ing, and the sentinel must not sleep. The student is 
not doing the one thing of student-life when he takes 
his vacation or plays foot-ball. The servant is not 
doing the one thing of household service when she 
lays aside the towel or the broom and takes up the 
crochet ball or the novel. Even woman's work is 
sometimes done while man's is "from sun to sun. " 
But Christian work is indeed never done. 

*" Though Hke the wanderer, 
The sun gone down. 
Darkness be over me, 
My rest a stone; 
Yet in my dreams I'd be 
Nearer, my God, to thee." 

Thus we may pray without ceasing, by making 
every breath an aspiration after Christlikeness. 

And so " the stony griefs " also may be turned to 
Bethels; yea, every circumstance of life, every temp- 
tation to evil temper may become a Divinely given 
chance, an opportunity of deciding the question 



LOYALTY AND DEVOTION 



127 



whether we shall be tossed by the restlessness of the 
world, the victim of every adverse wind that blows, 
or whether we shall have the peace and calm of 
Christ, a peace that rules and thus keeps the heart 
and mind, because it is " in Christ Jesus." Thus may 
we be like the men sent from Cornelius, alway jour- 
neying day and night toward the place where the 
Lord hath said, " I will put my name there." That 
place is the Mount Zion of a " kingdom that can not 
be moved." And our best form of Christian service is 
to receive that kingdom moment by moment. This 
may be done by the heart's constant faith, while the 
head and the hands may both be employed about 
their necessary work. 

Again, as " the altar sanctifies the gift," so the end 
of an act, while it does not justify a wrong means, yet 
sanctifies a common or material one. Neither matter 
nor those material uses of life which constitute the 
platform for the exposition of spiritual as well as tem- 
poral products are unholy in themselves. The ma- 
terial as compared to the purely spiritual is indeed 
"as moonlight unto sunlight, as water unto wine." 
But Jesus made water into wine and thus " showed 
forth His glory"; not His power, but His glory. The 
miracle was not so much in the transformation of the 
elements but in the transfiguration of an act of simple 
ministry into a sublime expression of the love of God 
for man and of man for man. So we are taught to 
call no labor common or unclean until we know the 
end for which it is wrought. 

If this end be love, we have then the true meas- 



128 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



uring-rod of all greatness. Celestial magnitudes can 
be calculated, even though the figures which express 
them transcend the power of imagination to conceive. 
The cycles of all history, geologic and anthropologic, 
can be computed, though the fading tablets of mem- 
ory refuse to retain the inscriptions of the events that 
fill up these vast spaces of time. Space and time and 
matter are each alike measureable, indefinite but not 
infinite. There is but one true, infinite love, human 
and Divine, " the love that passeth knowledge." And 
this is the true eternal life. 

"We live in deeds, not years, . 
In thoughts, not breaths, 
In feeHngs, not in figures on a dial; 
We should count time by heart-throbs; 
He lives most, who feels the most, thinks the noblest, 
acts the best." 

II. — As ail time, so all labor may be thus given to 
God. Let us reflect still further upon this truth. It is 
written in the scriptures, " Whatsoever ye do, whether 
ye eat or drink, do all for the glory of God," and yet 
the practical fulfillment of that principle in individual 
lives ordinarily waits upon some new revelation in 
personal experience when the Spirit of God has to say 
to us as he did to Peter: " What God has cleansed 
call not thou common." The distinction between the 
clean and the unclean, the sacred and the secular, has 
not yet been abolished in Christendom. We have yet, 
most of us, to learn with Paul, and " be persuaded in 
the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean of itself — save 
that to him who accounteth anything to be unclean, to 
him it is unclean." If you account your calling to be 



LOYALTY AND DEVOTION 



129 



common and not holy, to you it will be so, but if you 
give your business to God, and do everything in the 
name of the Lord Jesus," to you it will be holy. 

" We have inherited from our Latin fathers," says 
Dr. Josiah Strong, " a vicious dualism which runs 
through life a line of cleavage separating it into the 
sacred and secular. In mediaeval times the common 
was profane. That alone was sacred which was es- 
pecially set apart to religious uses. The church was 
sacred, the state was secular. The occupation of the 
clergy was holy, and they were under obligations to lead 
holy lives; the occupation of the laity, the common ac- 
tivities of the world were profane, and the people were 
expected to lead lives more or less worldly. They 
were, to be sure, under obligation to give a part of 
their time and substance to religion, but the remainder 
was their own, to be applied to secular uses. 

" Luther saw clearly that all these distinctions were 
false, and, according to Bunsen, all of the reformers 
of the sixteenth century agreed with Luther that 
there was no difference between secular and religious 
acts. But the reformation failed to free the church 
entirely from these misconceptions, and we still talk 
of sacred and profane history, of religious and secular 
duties, of sacred and secular callings. The church is 
content to accept as her province only a small part of 
the life of man. She claims the " sacred " as her 
sphere. The " secular " life must of course be lived 
under the restrictions of the moral law, but such a life 
is not supposed to be religious and is held to be quite 
foreign to the sphere of the church." 



130 THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 

We err in our judgment of what is common and 
what is holy in occupation as we do as to what is great 
and small in conduct. Actions become great or small 
not according to the earthly greatness of the doer but 
according to the spirit in which they are done. If 
Simon the apostle had preached the Gospel from a 
sordid motive, his preaching had been poor indeed. 
Simon, the tanner, tanning hides unselfishly, that he 
might have wherewithal to set meat before his apos- 
tolic guest was distinguishing himself in God's sight. 
Had Cornelius given his alms to be seen of men his 
ostentation would have belittled his gifts. Had any of 
the people who were the objects of his charity re- 
ceived their benefits with becoming gratitude, their 
thankful recognition would have lifted them, if truly 
needy, above the rank of unworthy paupers. Giving 
is indeed a royal act if done in a kingly spirit. But 
patronage may spoil the greatest favors as much as 
pride will ruin the smallest fortune. Receiving may 
also be done royally. Jacob, accepting the hospitality 
and help of Pharaoh in Egypt is as princely in his 
demeanor as is the monarch on his throne. Indeed, if 
it were not so, the gospel of the grace of God which 
is wholly a Divine gift, would, in the delivery thereof, 
detract from, rather than add to, whatever native no- 
bility may remain in the heart of man. But because 
receiving may be also a great act, faith adds to our 
virtue, as it did in Cornelius' case. " To as many as 
received Him to them gave He the right to become the 
sons of God." 

" I came across the other day," said Rev. B. Fay 



LOYALTY AND DEVOTION 



Mills at Montreal, " a little book out of which I read 
a few sentences. I read the title page and it was this. 
'Hiram Goff, a shoemaker by the grace of God.' 
Then I read the last page, and it was stated that 
when this man died they put on his tombstone that 
which he had requested: * Hiram Goff — A Shoemaker 
by the Grace of God. ' I looked to see what was in 
the middle of the book and read this, that a young 
stripling of a minister, who had just come to be 
pastor in the town, went down to talk with Hiram, for 
he had heard that he was a spiritual man, and he said, 
'Mr. Goff,' and Mr. Goff said, 'don't call me Mr. 
Goff, call me Hiram.' ' Well, Hiram, I have come to 
talk with you about the things of God, and I am very 
glad that a man can be in a humble occupation, and 
yet be a godly man.' The shoemaker stopped and 
looking up to him, said, ' don't call this a humble 
occupation.' The minister thought he had made a 
mistake, and said, ' Excuse me, I did not mean to 
reflect on what you do for a living.' The man replied, 
' You did not hurt me, but I was afraid you might 
hurt the Lord Jesus Christ. ' ' I believe the making 
of that shoe is just as holy a thing as the making of 
your sermon. I believe that when I come to stand 
before the throne of God he is going to say, " What 
kind of shoes did you make when on earth ? " And he 
might pick up this very pair in order to let me look at 
them in the blazing light of the great white throne; 
and He is going to say to you, " What kind of sermons 
did you make ? " and you will have to show Him your 
sermons. Now, if I have made better shoes than you 



132 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



have made sermons, I will have a better place in the 
kingdom of God.' " 

' ' A servant with this clause 
Makes drudgery Divine; 
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, 
Makes that and the action fine." 

says the noble Herbert. 

Work for some good, be it ever so slowly. 
Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly, 
Labor — all labor is noble and holy; 
Let thy great deed be thy prayer to thy God." 

How full the writings of the best of our modern 
poets and prose writers are of this truth. Whittier, in 
the dedication of his " Poems of Labor," says: 

' ' The doom which to the guilty pair 
Without the walls of Eden came. 
Transforming sinless ease to care 
And rugged toil, no more shall bear 
The burden of old crime, or mark of sinful shame. 

A blessing now, a curse no more. 

Since He, whose name we breathe with awe. 

The coarse mechanic vesture wore, 

A poor man toiling with the poor 

In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law." 

" ' Laborare est orare,' all true work is sacred," 
preaches Thomas Carlyle, " in all true work, were it 
but true hand-labor, there is something of Divineness. 
Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven. 
Sweat of brow; and up from that to sweat of the 
brain, sweat of the heart, which includes all Kepler 
calculations, Newton meditations, all sciences, spoken 
epics, all acted heroisms, martyrdoms — up to that 
* agony and bloody sweat, ' which all men have called 



LOYALTY AND DEVOTION 



Divine. O, brother, if this is not worship, then I say, 
the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thin^ 
yet discovered under God's sky." 

Ruskin says; " None of us, or very few of us, do 
either hard or soft work because we have chanced to 
fall into the way of it, and can not help ourselves. 
Now, nobody does anything well that they can not 
help doing; work is only done well when it is done 
with a will; and no man has a thoroughly sound will 
unless he knows he is doing what he should, and is in 
his place. 

" You are told, indeed, to sing psalms when you are 
merry, and to pray when you need anything; and, by 
the perversion of the Evil Spirit, we get to think that 
praying and psalm-singing are ' service. ' If a child 
finds itself in want of anything, it runs in and asks its 
father for it — does it call that doing its father a serv- 
ice ? If it begs for a toy or a piece of cake — does it 
call that serving its father ? That, with God, is 
prayer, and he likes to hear it; He likes you to ask 
Him for cake when you want it; but he doesn't call 
that 'serving Him.' Begging is not serving; God 
likes mere beggars as little as you do. He likes honest 
servants, not beggars. So when a child loves its 
father very much, and is very happy, it may sing little 
songs about him; but it doesn't call that serving its 
father; neither is singing songs about God, serving 
God. It is enjoying ourselves, if it's anything; most 
probably it is nothing; but if it's anything, it is serving 
ourselves, not God. And yet Vv-e are impudent enough 
to call our beggings and chantings ' Divine Service '; 



134 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



we say 'Divine service will be "performed" (that's 
our word — the form of it gone through) at 1 1 o'clock.' 
Alas ! unless we perform Divine service in every 
willing act of our lives we never perform it at all. 

III. — A consecrated life honors God with its sub- 
stance. There are several respects in which the alms- 
giving of Cornelius is worthy of our study and imita- 
tion. 

1st. He was liberal. He gave jnuch alms." 
Why not quote Cornelius as an example as well as the 
widow who cast in her mite } She and the rich man 
who " cast in much" represent the extremes of finan- 
cial ability. But here is a man of average wealth — 
not a Herod grown so rich by oppression and extor- 
tion that Susanna, the wife of his steward, could well 
afford to minister to Christ of her substance — not a 
private soldier discontented with his wages — but as to 
circumstances, a golden mean between the two. Yet 
he gives much. Noble example for people of moder- 
ate means. 

2d. He must have given systematically. A man 
of his military training and regular habits of devotion 
must have been as constant and periodic in his alms- 
giving as in his prayers. 

3d. He gave, not for his own benefit, and yet be- 
cause it was a means of grace and blessing. 

Rich men were never told by the apostles that 
their money was needed so much for the church 
as for themselves. " Charge them that are rich 
in this present world that they be not high minded, 
nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of 



LOYALTY AND DEVOTION 



riches, but on God, who giveth us richly all things 
to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in 
good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing 
to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a 
good foundation against the time to come, that they 
may lay hold on the life which is life indeed Life 
without enjoyment is not life. And the highest form 
of enjoyment comes from giving. Benevolence, like 
the quality of mercy, is not strained. " It droppeth 
as the gentle dew from heaven upon the place be- 
neath. It is twice blessed; it blesses him that gives 
and him that receives." 

4th. He gave to " the people." Unlike that cen- 
turion who built the Jews a synagogue, this man dis- 
tributed his money more widely. If he were living 
today his charity, though beginning at home, would 
not end there. 

5th. His prayers and his alms went together. 

Cornelius was a rare combination. There was in 
him as one has said, " A happy blending of devotion 
and well doing, of subjective piety and objective 
goodness." Sam Jones tells of a steamboat down 
south which had so small a boiler and so large a 
whistle, that when it moved it couldn't whistle and 
when it whistled it had to stop. There are some 
Christians who have such a small spiritual capacity 
that, when they pray or attend prayers, they seem to 
so exhaust their supply of grace that they can not give 
alms or pay, and, when they pay, they seem unable to 
pray. And so we have in our churches the " paying 
members" and the " praying members" and this di- 



136 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



vision is not made along the line that separates pov- 
erty from riches or vice versa. There are half- 
hearted Christians of both classes and they are one- 
sided because half-hearted. 

IV. — A consecrated life glorifies God at home. Here 
was a mian living in the days of the empire, in the 
period of Rome's decline in morals, yet the soul of 
honor and living happily, doubtless, with one of those 
Roman matrons, who were the glory of the early re- 
public. Rom.an honor and virtue and domestic purity 
and peace were not altogether things of the past. 
Alas, for our republic, if the domestic virtues of our 
fathers ever become things of the past with us. 
Nothing but Christian households " sanctified by the 
Word of God and prayer" can avert this. 

And these homes must be temples in which love and 
law, parental affection and authority are wedded. 
Readers of Ben Hur remember the description of the 
festival of Apollo in the grove of Daphne. " The law 
of the place was love but love without law." " Good 
reader," continues General Wallace, " why shall not 
the truth be told here ? Why not learn, that in that 
age there were in all the earth but two peoples 
capable of the exaltations referred to, love in its hoher 
sense — those who lived by the law of Moses, and those 
who lived by the law of Brahma. They alone could 
have cried 3'OU, Better a law without love than a love 
without law." Yet here was a Roman, o/ii\ at least, 
who had enshrined both law and love in the temple of 
his household. Not that the discipline of the barracks, 
do we suppose, was introduced in all its rigor into the 



LOYALTY AND DEVOTION 



home — yet we imagine we see Cornelius as the cen- 
turion of his own household. We hear him saying to 
one child " go and he goeth and to another come and 
he Cometh and to his servant, do this and he doeth 
it." Like that ancient chieftain, Abraham, this 
Roman captain " commanded his children and his 
household after him to keep the way of the Lord to 
do justice and judgment." Hence the Lord would 
not hide from him his gracious purpose. 

It is significant that to faithful householders the 
Gospel was first revealed and introduced into the con- 
tinents to Europe, Asia and Africa. It was to Lydia 
and the Philipian jailer and their households that 
Christ was first preached in Macedonia. " The 
promise is to you and to your children " was the first 
word of exhortation spoken by Peter on the day of 
Pentecost. The Gospel, beginning at Jerusalem, began 
in the Jewish homes. It was to a member of the 
queen's household, himself a man without family, but 
a faithful privy councilor in His mistress' home, that 
the Gospel was first sent on its way to the Dark Con- 
tinent. 

But perhaps some reader of these pages may say 
within himself, Nothing has yet been said about con- 
secration to missionary work or the salvation of 
souls." For two reasons we have omitted that 
reference thus far: 

First, because consecration to the world's salvation 
can not be included in any list of consecrated things; and 
second, because it is the great end and object of all other 
activities, all other work and service. Time, labor, sub- 



138 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



stance, family — all these are to be so consecrated as 
to be made subservient to this one great business, the 
salvation of the world. Because we believe this pro- 
foundly, we have insisted on the truth so amply illus- 
trated in this chapter and in the order of apostolic 
activity, that salvation as well as judgment must " be- 
gin at the house of God." Let God's people forsake 
all their idols and place their all on the altar of the 
church and the home, meaning by the former that 
temple which includes all saints, all space, all time 
and all the world, and by the latter that which is the 
sacred porch of such a temple, and the walls of that 
city of God, the kingdom of heaven, will go up swiftly, 
sohdly and with solemn yet glad shoutings of " Grace, 
grace unto it!" 



PREFIX TO CHAPTER VIII. 



While Peter yet spake these words ^ the Holy Ghost fell on all 
them which heard the word. And they of the circumcision which 
believed were amazed^ as many as came with Peter, because that 
on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. 
For they heard the7n speak with tongues, a7id magnify God. 
Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid the water ^ that these 
should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as 
well as wef" Acts x: 44-48. 

"Where does this interesting history imply that the moraHst 
does not need Christianity, and that the gospel is a superfluity? 
Do we find any real similarity between Cornelius and the mor- 
alist, or the naturalist of Christian lands? 

He was no mere moralist; he placed no dependence on good 
works. He was a devout worshiper of God, eminently religious, 
regarding with high consciousness not only all his obligations to 
his fellowmen, but the high obligations which bound him to his 
Maker. He was, moreover, listening to catch the voice of God, 
ready to take any advanced step to which the Divine light might 
lead him. He received the Gospel, was baptized, and united 
with the church under the influence of the first gospel sermon 
that he ever heard. 

Where is the man standing aloof from Christanity and the 
church, however excellent and noble his character, who can take 
his place beside Cornelius? He gave his whole being to Christ 
and his name and fortune to the infant church, when its doc- 
trines were denied by the multitude, and its simple band of 
adherents were feeble and despised, though in this act his position 
and fortune were imperiled. You, my friend, withhold from 
Christ heart and name and service, though his truth has been 
substantiated by the cumulative evidence of the Christian cen- 
turies, and his church has been crowned with the glorious vic- 
tories of over eighteen hundred years of unparalleled history. 
Cornelius saw and rejoiced in the light of this Sun of hope 
when first He rose above the horizon. You see Him ascending 
in full-robed splendor to the very zenith — flashing his glories 
over all the earth — and, with his burning beams dazzling your 
very eyes, wonder if it is not the twinkling of some faint star." — 
From Guides and Guards to Character-Building, by Dr. C. H. 
Payne. 



The New Creation, 



Chas. Wesley, 



\V. D. 




1. 0 what shall I do my Sav - iour to praise, So 

2. How hap - p3^ the mau whose heart is set free, The 

3. For Thou art their boast, their glo - ry and pow'r, And 



2— -i!: 



faith 
pec 



ful 
pie 
al 



and true, 

that can 

so trust 

^ 



— ' 



so plen - teous in grace; So 
be joy - ful in Thee! Their 
to see the glad hour ! My 



a; 



1^ 



strong to 
joy is 
soul's new 



de - liv - er, so 
to walk in the 
ere - a - tion, a 



^ ^ 



good to re - deem The 
light of Thy face. And 
life from the dead, The 



■-it — 



W 1 S— r— F^— ^ 



weak - est be - liev - er that hangs up - on Him ! 
still they are talk - ing of Je - sus - 's grace, 
day of sal - va - tion that lifts up my head. 




4 For Jesus, my Lord, is now defense ; 

I trust in His Word, none plucks me from thence 
Since T have found favor, He all tilings will do, 
My King and my Saviour shall make me anew. 

6 Yes, Lord, I shall see the bliss of Thine own, 
Thy secret to me shall soon be made known; 
For Rorrov/ and sadness T joy shnll reopive. 
And share in the gladness of all that b<'lieve. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE WHITE uniform; OR, A CLEAN HEART. 

" Know ye not," says St. Paul, " that as many as 
have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.^" 
Baptism, according to St. Paul, signifies the putting on 
of the white uniform of a clean heart. 

And why should not every man be thus baptized, be 
thus appareled ? Such purity is a most charming 
dress for the soul. It is not unattractive even in the 
eyes of the world. No one but admires it — even the 
prodigal, when becomes to himself, hates the garment 
"spotted by the flesh." Those who 'know most of 
human nature can but applaud in their hearts those 
who keep their garments " unspotted from the world." 

Nor is unbelief in the possibility of a clean heart 
due so much to the rarity of heart purity under the 
Sun, as to the Pagan nations that have prevailed, even 
in the church, concerning the attainability of such a 
state of grace. We have thought of holiness much as 
we think of the angels, to whom alone we have 
ascribed this attribute. We think of these latter as be- 
longing to an entirely different order of moral intelli- 
gences from the race of mankind. So we think of 
holiness as an exotic — a fruit of Paradise. We think 
that earth is the Devil's kingdom. Qod's kingdom 15 

X4J 



142 THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 

in heaven. Hence, like Nazareth, no good thing can 
come out of earth. To come into it is to be defiled. 

And this belief arises in part because the body is 
imagined to be the seat of sin. Moral evil is supposed 
to have its lodgment in the wslUs of the soul's dwelling. 
It can never be entirely removed even by the most 
powerful disinfectant while we are " in this tabernacle." 
The building must be taken down and destroyed before 
sin can be eradicated. This error is a relic of the an- 
cient heathen teaching that the residence of sin was in 
matter, an error quite as common and as unreason- 
able as the notion of the Jews in Christ's time that 
" what entereth into the man, defileth the man." But 
Jesus contradicted this doctrine when he said " out of 
the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adul- 
teries, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings; these 
are the things which defile the man; but to eat with 
unwashed hands defileth not the man." Unclean- 
ness is not on the outside but on the inside, not in the 
walls but in the inhabitant of the dwelling. 

And yet, in the face of these plain teachings — that 
heart disloyalty is the secret source of sensuality, that 
inward separation from God who is the soul's true love, 
is the foundation of all sin — the church ever since the 
first century has leaned to the imagination that death 
was a greater Savior than the Holy Spirit. 

To correct this falsehood we need only look for a 
moment again at Peter's vision. The vessel was " let 
down from heaven to the earth." The kingdom of 
heaven is now on earth. It is a kingdom that is to 
come to us, not one to which we are to go. Christ 



THE WHITE UNIFORM 



taught us to pray " Thy kingdom come\ Thy will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven.'' " What God hath 
cleansed call not thou common." Which is the 
greater sanctifier, death, or the blood of Christ ? " And 
the vessel which was let down by four corners upon 
the earth w^as received up again into heaven." Holi- 
ness on earth first, heaven afterward. This is God's 
order. " Without holiness no man shall see the 
Lord." 

Since the ladder of death, then, as a possible stair- 
way to a higher life, is taken down, while the elevator 
of faith, operated by the power of the Holy Spirit, is 
offered freely for our use, it may be well to notice 
first of all, that this ascent is made by the power of 

The One Spirit. 

Rev. B. Fay Mills, in his famous sermon on " Re- 
ceiving the Holy Ghost, " says: " There are some people 
who would not be satisfied unless they could actually 
distinguish in every respect concerning what they call 
the offices of God the Father, God the Son and God 
the Holy Ghost. I do not believe that the Word 
of God makes any such distinction. I believe that 
the Holy Spirit and the Son and God the Eternal 
Father are all said to be Creators and Redeemers and 
Regenerators and Sanctifiers. I believe that when 
we receive the Holy Ghost we are receiving not one 
little degree or manifestation of God, but all that there 
is of God. While I believe that the Holy Spirit has 
been always in the world, I do believe that the mani- 
festation of God the Spirit has been especially re- 



144 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



served for this dispensation and I believe that we 
have in the fullness of the Holy Ghost what our 
fathers never had and that v/hich makes the kingdom 
of God possible by the manifestation of God in His 
fullness in the individual life." 

But this elevator of faith has two compartments. 
The door is double. These two sides correspond to 

The Two Voices 

heard by Peter on the housetop. The first voice 
spoke to him while he was in the trance. It was a call 
to belief. It said once and again in effect, " think." 
It followed closely upon his prayer. The second voice 
spoke to him when he was wholly awake. It was a 
call to action. It did not say: " Rise, Peter, kill and 
eat," but " Arise, Peter, get thee down and go with 
them." 

The large majority of professing Christians leave 
both their "first works" and their "first love." 
The machinery of Christian activity, instead of increas- 
ing in its freedom of movement, loses in a degree its 
first motion. Whether this retard is due to a neces- 
sary reaction or to the presence of that " sin which 
dwelleth in us," it is certain that the soul in conse- 
quence of inaction will become clogged up with the 
dust that always accumulates upon stationary wheels. 
Stagnation always breeds corruption. The purity of 
the bubbling mountain spring must be maintained by 
the constant leap and dance of the babbling mountain 
brook. The missionary impulse of the young convert, 
accompanied as it is by the new sense of heart-purity, 
is the motion of the mountain stream. 



THE WHITE UNIFORM 



How strange that it should ever grow sluggish or 
lose in any measure its native crystalline sparkle 
and freshness ? Strange, too, that it should meet with 
obstacles that it can not dislodge and that still further 
discolor its waters. But such is the universal experi- 
ence, and when a soul finds itself in this state, it needs 
a double work of grace. Nothing but the interposition 
of a Divine Hand can remove the dust from the ma- 
chinery. Only he who repaired the watch in the first 
place and put in the new main-spring can now clean 
it. Only the force that started the mountain spring 
by the copious showers from heaven can so fill the 
larger stream, as to purify its stagnant waters. Only 
the baptism with the Holy Ghost can at the same 
time inspire with new love and wash away the ac- 
cumulated impurities. But this Divine power can do 
more; it can dislodge the imbedded rocks of car- 
nality and cut a clear channel for the soul's future 
flow of love and obedience. 

But this double work will not be accomplished by 
faith alone, as that expression is usually understood. 
As the faith that justifies is a " faith that worketh by 
love," so is the faith that purifies the heart." The 
soul's bath must be supplemented or rather attended 
by such exercise as will combine with the water of 
baptism to remove all impurities. The word " bap- 
tism," literally translated, means" washing" — that is, 
an active exercise. In it the subject is also an agent. 
So in the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The human 
subject co-operates, at every stage, with the Divine 
forces. We are both justified and sanctified by faith, 
but not by faith without works. 



146 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



As there are two compartments in this elevator of 
faith — so there are at least three stories to the build- 
ing of a completed Christian experience. In the Jewish 
tabernacle there were three courts — the outermost in 
which stood the brazen laver filled with the water of 
purification, the holy place into which the priest en- 
tered with the blood of the sacrifice, and the " holy of 
holies " where the shekinah or fire of God's symbolized 
presence burned. So the apostle exhorts us to 
" enter into the holiest of all " with our hearts 
sprinkled by the blood of atonement, from an evil 
conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. 
(Heb. x: 22.) 

This leads us to consider the several stages of entire 
purification; or, 

The Three Calls. 

" And this was done three times and the vessel was 
received up again into heaven." In the Epistle to 
the Hebrews the Apostle speaks of " the doctrine of 
baptisms and laying on of hands" as among the first 
principles of the teaching of Christ. And Peter, in 
relating the story of Cornelius' experience, says, " And 
as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them even 
as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the 
Word of the Lord, how that He said, John indeed bap- 
tized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the 
Holy Ghost." According to Peter's testimony then, 
Cornelius and his household, before he began to preach, 
had passed the outer court of repentance and stood 
at the door of the holy place of saving faith in the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 



THE WHITE UNIFORM 



And of Cornelius particularly it must be said, unless 
we are to believe that one may live in a justified rela- 
tion to God w^ithout being born of the Spirit, that he, 
previous to St. Peter's sermon, had entered into the 
kingdom of Heaven. Hov^ otherwise could he have 
been acceptable to God ? Cornelius and his household 
knew enough of Christian truth before they heard 
Peter preach to lead them into a saving personal rela- 
tion with God. We believe that he and some of his 
w^ere led, under the influence of Peter's visit and 
preaching into the " holiest of all." " And God, which 
knoweth the heart, bear them witness, giving them the 
Holy Ghost, eve7i as He did unto its, and He made no 
distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts 
by faith." 

They were baptized " in the name of the Lord Jesus. " 
This baptism signifies more than repentance — viz. , faith 
in Christ. (See Acts xix: 4; also ii: 38.) But if this, 
then, was the significance of Christian baptism, what 
was the symbolical import of the " laying on of hands.?*" 
It would seem that, if Apostolic custom be authority for 
the practice, there is as much Scriptural warrant 
for the rite of confirmation, or the laying on of hands, 
as for baptism. " When the Apostles, which were at 
Jerusalem, heard that Samaria had received the Word 
of God they sent unto them Peter and John, who, 
when they were come down, prayed for them that 
they might receive the Holy Ghost, for as yet he was 
fallen upon none of them, only they had been baptized 
in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their 
hands on them and they received the Holy Ghost." 



THE y\NGEL AND THE VISION 



(Acts viii: 14-17.) And this would doubtless have been 
done in the house of Cornelius had not the Holy Ghost 
fallen before Peter had finished his discourse. The 
" inward grace " came before the " outward sign" had 
been made. Perhaps, however, the laying on of 
hands would have been observed in this case had it 
not been for the unbelief of the Jewish disciples who 
came with Peter and who, in spite of the Pentecostal 
signs and gifts attendant upon this outpouring of 
the Holy Ghost, would not believe that God had 
granted to these Gentiles any more than " repentance 
unto life." The gift of saving grace was all that they 
would admit, but the abundance of grace " was 
reserved for the Hebrew believers. " Can any man 
forbid water," said Peter, "that these should not 
be baptized," receive the lower sign, "who have 
received the Holy Ghost," the highest grace ? 

There are, then, these three stages in the progress 
of the soul from sin to holiness: 

First, Repentance; second, Faith; third, Con- 
secration. 

The great mass of believers, like Cornelius, are 
delivered from the bondage of a slavish fear of death 
or " that which comes after death" before they are 
delivered from those other forms of bondage called by 
the Apostle in the Eighth Chapter of Romans — 
"vanity" and " corruption. " For "the whole crea- 
tion," spoken of by St. Paul in that chapter, symbolizes 
just what the sheet full of living creatures symbolized 
to Peter — the Gentile world. Paul taught that this 
" whole creation " w^ould be delivered not only from 



THE WHITE UNIFORM 



149 



that vanity of mind or emptiness in which they then 
walked, but would also be delivered from the bondage 
of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children 
of God. This is the glorious liberty of perfect love. 
It is not deliverance from pain or travail. That is still 
a fourth form of bondage, another link in the chain 
that binds the world, like Prometheus of old, to the rocks 
of this Mount Caucasus, a sin-cursed earth. Only, 
unlike Prometheus, we need not have the vulture of 
sin gnawing at our vitals. Moreover, when the fire of 
the Holy Ghost falls, every cord that binds the soul 
will be burnt — save one. " Ourselves also," which 
have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves, 
groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption, to wit, 
the redemption of our body. (Romans viii : 23.) Let 
every reader carefully consider this passage. There is 
no man, says St. Paul, who can not be delivered, as 
we apostles have been, from " fear," from " vanity," 
from " corruption." 

But he may have to gradually reach his total eman- 
cipation. He may have to walk awhile a servant, as 
Cornelius was, not a slave — but " differing nothing 
from a servant though he be the lord of all." The 
fear of death and hell may have given place to the 
higher fear of God and sin. " We Germans," saj^s 
Bismarck, " fear no one but God." " Fear nothing," 
said Wesley to his followers, but sin." In this sense 
we must always remain servants of God. Yet we 
may have more than the " fear of God before our 
eyes." We may have the love of God in our hearts. 
This is the estate of childhood. The heart, then, is 



150 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



no longer empty; God's love flows into it. There then 
remains but the perfecting of this love, the filling up 
of the vessel until it hath cast out all " fear v^hich 
hath torment." This is complete victory. As "the 
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom " so this 
perfect love which casteth out all fear that hath 
torment is its end or consummation. 

We are persuaded that no one leaps full-grown, 
Minerva-like, into the fullness of Christian experience. 
Geology and an evolutionary philosophy has prepared 
the church in our day for a more rational interpreta- 
tion of God's method in the creation of the world 
and man. We believe it will also prepare us to see 
that He follows the same method in redemption. Out 
of the chaos of moral confusion, joined as it is in the 
ordinary "sinner of the Gentiles" to "every evil 
work" there can not be evoked a perfect moral order 
in a single da}^ The light of conviction issuing in a 
genuine repentance is enough for the evening and the 
morning of the first and the second da3'S. Let the 
penitent separate himself from his sins — the " waters 
which are above the firmament" from "the waters 
which are below." " The wisdom that is from above" 
will not mix with the wisdom which is " earthly, sen- 
sual, devilish." And let him bring forth " fruits meet 
for repentance. " " Let the dry land appear. " Then 
he is prepared for faith with its revelation of " the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." This is re- 
generation. This is the appearance of the Sun of 
Righteousness above the soul's horizon. But it does 
not appear till the fourth day. And then should fol- 



THE WHITE UNIFORM I5I 

low an activity and usefulness, not along the earthly 
plane of the Baptist's instructions as to moral duties. 
But " let the waters bring forth abundantly the mov- 
ing creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above 
the earth in the open firmament of heaven. A re- 
generate man should have the wings of true spiritual 
life. He should not be a fish or a slow-going reptile, 
but a true mammal, a warm-blooded and quick-mov- 
ing creature, instinct wdth the life of faith and love. 
But he does not become a true man in Christ, fully 
saved, and we are only half made until we are fully 
saved, until the new creation is finished and he has 
received the answer in his soul to the prayer of 
Wesley : 

' Finish, then, Thy new creation, 
Pure and spotless let me be. 
Let us see Thy great salvation 
Perfectly restored in Thee." 

This leads us to speak in the fourth place of 
The Four Visitors 

whom the soul receives that has entered into this 
experience. They are like the four men, the apostle 
included, whom Simon, the tanner, entertained in his 
house. They are the four pillars of the soul's house, 
four anchors to the soul, " entering into that which is 
within the veil. " 

Entire consecration is the inlet into this experience. 
Once pass this bar, and we have entered the mouth of 
the harbor of perfect soul rest. This is not the haven 
of the skies but it is so near to that " bay with its 
beach " (Acts xxvii: 39) that when in it we are vir- 



152 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



tually in heaven. Heaven is a state of soul. So is 
the heaven, of "perfect peace." In this latitude, 
heaven, even as a place, is seen to be not " the land 
w^hich is very far off." The soul here does not sing 

' ' There is a happy land 
Far, far away." 

We then surmise, as Paul and his fellow-travelers 
did at the end of the fourteenth, night of their perilous 
voyage, that " they were drawing near to some country. " 
Then " they cast out four anchors from the stern and 
wished for the da}^" So God casts out four anchors 
to those who thus draw near to Him in full assurance 
of faith. They are four anchors to the soul, four 
channels of that personal revelation, which every 
sanctified believer needs to establish him in this grace. 
They are mentioned in Heb. vi: 4-6. " The Holy 
Ghost, " The Heavenly Gift, " the " good Word of God " 
and " the Powers of the World to Come, " of every one 
of which we may taste or know experimentally. The 
author of that inspired song, " Blessed Assurance, " has 
given a verse each to all but one of these several in- 
struments of Divine blessing. . 

The Heavenly Gift. 
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. 

0 what a foretaste of Glory Divine! 
Heir of salvation, purchase of Qod, 
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood. 

The Holy Ghost. 
Perfect submission, all is at rest 

1 in my Savior am happy and blest; 
Watch ini; and waiting, looking above, 
Filled with his goodness, lost in his love. 



THE WHITE UNIFORM 



The Powers of the World to Come. 
Perfect submission, perfect delight 
Visions of rapture, burst on my sight; 
Angels descending, bring from above 
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love. 

Fanny Crosby's experience may be that of the mod- 
ern Cornehus, who, having given up all, is first visited 
by an angel, one of the heavenly powers, then by the 
apostle with " the good Word of God," then by the 
Spirit of Christ — " the heavenly gift " revealed in that 
Word and finally by the Holy Ghost in his fullness. 

And such an experience as this will open the eyes of 
the spiritual understanding to see God in everything. 
" There are four testaments, the Old and the Oldest, 
the New and the Newest." In the volume of Nature, 
" the Oldest," as well as in the volume of church his- 
tory now being made, " the Newest," he will see God. 
" Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. " 

Surely it were worth the while " crossing the bar " to 
get into such goodly fellowship of sainthood and mys- 
tery. To reach such a stage as this in our heavenly 
journey, we may well call the name of that place 
Mahanahim. (Genesis xxxii: 2.) It is the tropical zone 
of faith, " where the flowers bloom forever and the 
Sun is always bright." 

But what is the practical end and aim of such an 
experience. For an answer we introduce 

The Five Commissioners. 

When the lepers were cleansed, Christ invariably 
told them to go, show themselves to the priest and 
offer the gift that Moses commanded. This sacrifice 



154 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



was of deep symbolic significance. The substance of 
our whole commission is beneath this shadow. It was 
a most comprehensive act, one in which all the offer- 
ings of the law were combined. If we can find what 
all these signify we can find the wealth of meaning 
there is in that little word of the Savior, " go." The 
first three of these offerings were all of a sweet sav- 
or, " because they did not speak of sin. They are 
like the three messengers sent by Cornelius — who 
know nothing as yet, being heathen, of the true na- 
ture of sin or the gospel of salvation, or, better still, 
they represent those prayers and alms which the an- 
gel said were gone up for a memorial before God. 
Concerning these, more particularly, the prayers were 
the burnt offering, the alms were the meat offering. 
Andrew Jukes, who is the great authority on this sub- 
ject of the typical meaning of the offerings, says, " In 
the burnt-offering the surrender of life to God repre- 
sents the fulfillment of man's duty to God; man yield- 
ing to God His portion to satisfy all his claim. In 
the meat-offering the gift of corn and oil represents 
the fulfillment of man's duty to his neighbor; man in 
his offering surrendering himself to God, but doing it 
so that he ma}^ give to man his portion. Thus the 
burnt-offering is the perfect fulfillment of the law of 
the first table; the meat-offering the perfect fulfillment 
of the second." But Cornelius is also " a man that 
feared God with all his house." He is one who offers 
the peace-offering. And what is that ? According to 
Jukes again " the point in which the peace-offering 
differed from all others was, that in it the offerer, the 



THE WHITE UNIFORM 



priest, and his children and God all fed together. 
In this they had something in common. Here 
each had a part. They held communion in feed- 
ing on the same offering. " Who feared God with 
all his house ? " Yet these offerings were the lesser 
gifts and sacrifices of the Jews. The great of- 
ferings were the sin offering and the trespass offering. 
" In the sin and trespass offerings the offerer came, 
not as a worshipper, but as a convicted sinner, not to 
give in his offering but to receive, in his offering, which 
represented himself, the judgment due to his sin and 
trespass." These sacrifices were burned without the 
camp. Now these Old Testament offerings all have 
their parallels in the New. And they typify the five 
great sacrifices which God's people, sanctified unto 
him, must continually offer. The sacrifice of praise 
and of good works are the burnt offering and meat of- 
fering of the new dispensation. (Heb. xiii: 15-16.) 
The sacrifice of obedience " to them that have the 
rule over us" is our peace offering. (Heb. xiii: 17.) 
The holy man must go and learn first to " show piety 
at home and to requite his parents." But then he 
must learn also to " go without the camp, bearing 
Christ's reproach. " The great outside world needs him 
and if, in ministry to them, he must needs suffer for 
righteousness sake, happy is he. He is then enabled 
to make up in some small measure what was lacking 
in the sufferings of Christ. The sacrifices of " confes- 
sion " and "reproach" (see Heb. xiii: 13-15, Rev. 
Vers.) are thus our sin and trespass offerings. The 
one makes deep spirituality possible, the other gives 



156 



THE ANGEL AND THE VISION 



the martyr spirit which makes the missionary spirit 
perfect. They are represented by our other two com- 
missioners, CorneHus and Peter, the one in all humil- 
ity sending for the apostle, the other bringing the 
Gospel with zeal to his door. The coat of humility 
and the cloak of zeal — these are the military garments 
which every true soldier of the cross should wear. 

Now the first three of these sacrifices the church to- 
day offers acceptably to God, but does she offer the 
other two ? Are not our churches too exclusively 
places of worship, of benevolence, of family religion ? 
Are our churches in general animated by a holy 
zeal for the salvation of the souls around them that 
are perishing in their sins ? Is not our Christianity 
largely of the Old Testament type ? Are we not rather 
Jewish than fully Christian in our Christianity ? And 
again, do not " holiness people," as they are called, 
neglect too much to offer the last sacrifices : Do they 
believe that Christ can not only save /ro;/i the utter- 
most depths of sin and for the uttermost length of 
time, and 7(;ito the uttermost heights of holiness but 
also over the uttermost parts of the earth's surface ? 
Do we not hold the doctrine and the experience too 
negatively, forgetting that the blood of Christ purges 
not only /ro7/i dead works but to serve the living God ? 
Do we seek the Baptism of the Holy Ghost for great 
power as well as purity } There may be no power 
without purity but there can be purity without much 
power. God never gives great power for private and 
personal use. Peter was just as pure a man on the 
housetop of Simou as hQ >va3 in the house of Cor- 



THE WHITE UNIFORM 



nelius, but he was not as powerful. The pure in heart 
must not only see God, but seek to save men and as 
they go forth on that mission, doors of opportunity will 
open and lead into upper rooms of Pentecostal power. 

Then will our testimony be believed on in the 
world. 

The Six Witnesses, 

like the six brethren who accompanied Peter, will at- 
test the genuineness of our sanctification. " There are 
three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Son 
and the Holy Ghost." These may satisfy the indi- 
vidual saint. But there are three that bear witness 
on earth, " the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood. 
And these are needed to satisfy the unbeliever and the 
unsanctified believer. The voice of the Father at the 
baptism of Jesus, the face of the Son and the Spirit 
in the form of a dove were the heavenly signs and seals, 
but the water of baptism, symbol of that Word, that 
" record which God gave concerning his Son " in the 
Old, as well as the New Testament Scriptures, the 
" power of the Spirit," which immediately came upon 
Jesus, enabling Him to resist the Tempter, andendueing 
Him for preaching and service; above all, that other 
and greater "baptism of blood," symbol of the new 
life which is " in the Son" today as it was given by 
the Son on the cross of Calvary; these are the wit- 
nesses the world specially needs. These are the signs 
and seals which men can neither gainsay or resist. 
Let us have these, and by their testimony every word 
shall be established. 



POSTSCRIPT. 

Acts X. 



" The Word which God sent to Israel " of old 
*' The Word which was published by Christ " 
These two constitute the whole story when told 
To all who will hear it aright. 

Two testaments here or two volumes in one — 

They may be divided by four — 
The " witness"" of prophets; then, deeds of God's Son — 

Not all the world's books could hold more — 

The " witness" of Matthew, of Mark, Luke and John; 

(For Peter and Paul, marking down. 
Dictated the matter to " Marcus, my son" — 

'Twas Luke brought "the books and the gown.") 

The ^'witness" of Jesus Himself in the Acts, 

Confirmed by the hand of the Lord, 
The Holy Ghost signing and sealing as facts 

These miracles heaven outpoured; 

To Christ's resurrection, now add what he taught 
Though apostles who ''witness and preach," 

And read the Epistles, their foundation-thought. 
Sent all to the churches by each. 

Then note the true order in which these parts fall 

Beginning with " angels" and priests; 
Continued by Jesus, the babe in the stall 

Surrounded by " four-footed beasts." 

Then carried by Peter, through all Galilee 

And brethren who preach Jesus, too. 
As forth on their mission to other lands flee 

These martyrs so bold and so true. 



159 



POSTSCRIPT 



The " four days " were finished when mightily grew 

The Word of our God and prevailed. 
The Acts were not ended on purpose you knew. 

Th' Epistles give history veiled. 

But, then, all was finished when Christ sealed the book — 

Apocalypse faithful and true ! 
If any take from, God will blot out his soul, 

Or curse him, if any add to. 

The week will be ended whene'er the last two 

Days' work of redemption 's complete — 
The first resurrection and triumph o'er woe 

Of martyrs that fall at His feet — 

The thousand year reign and last battle with sin 

In which all the forces contend — 
Then judgment and fire, a new earth to dwell in, 

The Sabbath that never shall end. 

These things are declared us all through the report, 

The practical matter is this. 
The Holy Ghost's with us to cut the work short 
" Bring in everlasting rightness." 

Then haste while the age lasts. The crucified One 
" Cut off in the midst of the week," 
Will come in the clouds when the Spirit's work's done 
Full time for the Lord whom we seek. 

To return to His temple. Ah! Christ is the theme. 

Beginning and end of the Book. 
The Alpha, Omega and every jot e'en. 

You'll find Him wherever you look. 

The whole is inspired, though written below 

By sage and by saint and savant. 
If critics deny it, the " high " or the " low " 

Their words are mere skeptical cant. 



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INCORPORATED 1881 



COMMERCIAL NATIONAL BANK 

...COLUMBUS, OHIO 

Paid in Capital $200,000 Walter Crafts, Pres. 

-^^r T. Ewmg Miller, V. P. 
Surplus and Undivided '/wIw' W. H. Albery , Cashier.... 

PRoriTS- $75,000 ^"\\^ ~ 

DIRECTO^=;--. -Walter Crafts, M. McDaniel, W. A. Mahoney, T. Ewin? Miller, 
— D. E. Putnam, D. S. Grav, C. D. Firestone, John Joyce, W. 
H. Albery. 

Issue Foreign Exchange and Letter.<^ of Credit, available in all principal 
Foreign Cities 

DAVID S GRAY. President FREDERICK W. PRENTISS, Cashier 

...CLINTON NATIONAL BANK... 

COa. HIGH AND CHESTNUT STS. 
SAFETY DEPOSIT BOXES CAPITAL. $200,000 

annual RENTAL $2 AND UPWARDS 
_ r- , xu o t SURPLUS and UNDIVIDED 

Every Facility for the Prompt ^ 
and Careful Transaction of a— profits. $50,000 

GENERAL BANKING BUSINESS Accounts of Individuals, Finns, and Cor- 
porations solicited upon terms as liberal as 
their business and financial standing warrants. 

DIRECTORS.. .David S. Gray, James Kilbourne, Theodore Rhoades, 

Henry A. I^anman, Robert E. Sheldon, 

Randolph S. Warner, Frederick W. Prentiss. 

Zhc Desbler Bational Bank 

UNITED STATES DEPOSITORY 

No. I DE5HLER BLOCK 

CAPITAL PAID IN, $300,000 _ Geo. W. Sinks, Pres. 

(Q) John G. Deshler, V. Pres. 

SURPLUS FUND, $60,000 ^ C. J. Hardy, Cashier... 

Does A General Banking Business 

Our resources and special facilities enable us to receive on favorable terms 
accounts of Individuals, Firms, Bunks and other Corporatlnns. 

We issue travelers* cheques available in all par.suf the World. They 
are more convenient than letters of credit and half the cost. 

United States Bonds and other FIrst-Class Investment Securities dealt in. 




INCORPORATED FEB. 24, 1893 

The Children's Home Society 

OF OHIO 

GOV. WM. Mckinley, pres. 

vice-presidents: 

GEN. R. BRINKERHOFF, MANSFIELD 
COL. NOAH THOMAS, LONDON 
HELP A CHILD TO PINO PERKINS BYERS, SEC. and TREAS. 

A HOME HON. E. O. RANDALL, COUNSELOR, COLUMBUS 

OUR MAXIM— The Best Thing for the Child 

riR IcrT To seek suitable homes in good private families for orphan and 
UBJbV^l dependent children. 

Ai ]Vif f A p Y National Society, doing such work in 22 States. Over 

A»j.<vii-.8i^iV I ^QQQ placed in good families in 11 years. 

SIIPPOPT I^onations. Membership Fees: Active, $r per year; I^ife, $25, I5 
is^Ji-f v/K. I pgj. ygj^j. fQj. g years; Patron, $50; Benefactor, $100. 

4®=-Do you desire a child? Do you know of one homeless? Do you know 
of a childless home? I^et us know. We will do the rest. Address, 

DR. F. H. DARBY, State Sup*t, 

38 West First Ave., COLUMBUS, OHIO 

Uearn tojprtte IRapibli?.*** 

AT THE 



National Pen Art Hall 



Business College 

DELAWARE. OHIO 

The Best Equipped Business College In the United States 

EVERYTHING COMPLETE WITH THB 
VERY BEST OF INSTRUCTORS 



Write For Cataloquk 
AND Tkrms to 



L. LeMAY 



/ffben insure tbeir Itpes 



The Man of Small Means insures to protect his family or others 
in case of death. For a small annual payment he insures to them what 
it would take years to secure in any other way and thus relieves him- 
self from painful anxiety. 

The rian of Venture and Speculation insures because though 
his family may be rich to-day, to-morrow's reverses in case of his 
death may leave them in poverty. 

The Ordinary Man of Business insures to protect his estate. 
He has seen many an estate melt away in the slow process of settle- 
ment, for lack of a few hundreds or thousands of ready cash. 

The Retired Business Man, the Capitalist, insures to make 
a good investment. Life Insurance Companies make the safest invest- 
ment, without risk or speculation, and with prompt re-investment. 

Life Insurance does some of its Best Work in providing for the 
time when a man no longer needs protection but does need help. 

THE UNION CENTRAL LIFE INSURANCE COHPANY 
meets this need with the best forms of policies ever known. 

This Company is organized under OHIO LAWS, the best in the 
world. Hence, it cannot make risky investments. Its securities are 
mostly mortgages on real estate worth in cash double the amount 
loaned thereon, exclusive of building. 

For further particulars address, 

F/ F. GREENE, Agent, 



Qranville, Ohio 



Hartsough's ^oUege. . . 



„ Send Fos Terms 

OF 



Shorthand 
Typewriting 



AND 



LEADING 
SCHOOL IN 
CENTRAL 
OHIO - 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 



Individual Instruction. No Classes. 
Prompt Attention for Stenographic Work. 
Copying Done at Reasonable Rates. 

BUSINESS MEN SUPPLIED WITH Shortliand ThorougHly Taught 

COMPETENT STENOGRAPHERS Es^^ by Cor?espondence 

44 WESLEY BLOCK. COLUMBUS. OHIO 




^-^^t^n^ta^z^ ^^^^^^^ 

B. W. Cor. High and Gay Sts., McCune Block, Columbus, Ohio. 



JUODERN, PROGRESSIVE 
PR ACT 1 CAL 

FALL TERH OPENS SEPTEHBER 2d to pth 

Bookkeeping taught b}' the "New Patented Method of Actual Business 
Practice." We have the exclusive right ol this system.— The only Practical 
Business School in Central Ohio. 

BOOKKEEPiNS, PEHMANSHIP 
COMMERCIAL LAW, ENGLISH 

Day and Evening Sessions. School in session the entire year and Students 
may enter at any time.— catalogue and CIRCULARS SENT FREE. 



MCCUNE BLOCK. 

COLUMBUS, OHIO 



J. W. McCAFFERTY, Principal 



GOLUmBUS BU6GY GO. 

Manufacturers of 



STRICTLY HIGH GRADE VEHICLES 




We are the largest manufacturers of light vehicles in the world. We 
have the largest and finest repository in the State,where can be seen 
over 100 different styles of vehicles of the very latest designs in 

Carriages, Surreys, Phaetons, Cabriolets, Traps, Etc. 

We are known as builders of HIGH GRADE VEHfCLES, East, West, North 

and South. Our work has gone to the British Isles. Africa, Germ an j-, Australia 
and India; which shows the World-wide reputation of our work. Reader, 
when you are in need of a vehicle of any kind, buy one built by the Columbus 
Buggy Co., and you will get the World's Best. Come and .see us, or write for 
our one hundred page illustrated catalogue. 

COLUMBUS BUGGY GO. 

COLUnBUS, OHIO 



SOMETHING NEW FOR ASTHMA SUFFERERS 



Please don't condemn until you know what it is. 
Remember this is an age of progress. 
No medicine taken into the stomach. 
Perfect relief guaranteed. 

Write for circulars which will fully explain a new system of 
relief and cure for Asthma. 



N. TUCKER, n. D. 



OHIO 



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Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: June 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 niomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
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